I listen to the guns. They clear
the ground of all its color
& I flirt. I kiss you in the grove
too quickly. I swing through

your undress the words that “black
lives …” I do not know
how to ask you to
love me yet. For everyone of us

I see die, I take you in
with all my air. It hurts.
I let you go just to keep breathing.
I have one transcendental

hope that God is erasing our kind
from the dirt. In the paradise,
in the spaceship of His own
making, we will wake

to a field of clean dark
faces. Right now, I fear my own
mortality. I see the news. I might die
with you. I hope it is

the atom bomb that lifts the bright
pink off our mouths; we are nothing
to each other / as our imprint
leaves the smoke. I do not want to be

the chalk-drawn street, the square
outline of our arms turn to one
smudge while we grow
cold in the blood, like the strawberries

we trowel between our mouths;
we play / we only practice
when we kiss each other. But I am not
pretending. I need you / to know: I have

loved; I have love. But I do not have faith
that all our good will rid these times
of grit. I make room for when you go; I live
here, in what will come.