undone | the plug won't | nameless
by Ashia Ajani
‘manos’
the plug won’t
after Mykki Blanco
i grease myself with lipgloss & lotion
& perhaps a lil blush will conjure color courage
to go sit in this nigga’s honda for the third time
in two weeks.
the weedman is the only man to ever see me
with my scarf on. i dip and toe a green line, the
intimacy of purchase lingers want on my lips.
yes, this too is heady. in the eveningtime, i
upcycle heartbreak, try on a new facade of
sexycool meant to bring back bliss. eyes low
i coax memory to rewrite itself through a wrapped
fatty and weighty conversations like
did you know so n so died? did you hear about-
have you gone- where is the- he didn’t deserve-
i had to leave i couldn’t stand another moment-
rent done gone up another 175 so let me get
a ½ ounce of anything that will pull my mind
back from the brink of no return. eager to oblige,
weedman hands me a bag of indigo to evince
a night sky from beyond my wildest emptiness.
both of us Black and hustling, rife with dreams
of soulmates evergreen. this be an elegiac alliance.
heartache notwithstanding, he speaks my way with an
upward cadence. lovers come and go but this- this is
something sacred. i don’t know where my paycheck ends
and his begins. but i love (the idea of) being tethered to
something. i am a shapeshifter eroded by grief;
render my tenement hollow, let the fullness of me
idle below unseeded frontier to conquer.
i call myself a Before. simply ungrounded.
how i began, not like this.
undone
The first woman I loved greased my scalp to the tune of Kiki Fantroy’s laugh.
Between the scalp and follicle: Blue Magic.
Between the body and the soul: queer.
Two years later, my therapist asks me to read up on “trauma bonding.”
Some days, we make the binaries of colonization work for us.
I ask: who will plead for us given the timeline we have been handed?
If the world makes us bitter ain’t that something to chew on?
Loving you
Is an act in how long I can make the fleeting happiness stay
When even the people who share our skin write our destruction into law
When the sorrow titrating down generations pools at the base of our spines
When the wound has been picked at so much
One can’t even call it flesh
When will it ever not hurt
To get free?
nameless
At coffee shops, I take on a new face. I just want my
cold brew. The jumbled pieces of genealogy settle into
old dust. Seeds knocked from my braids long, long ago.
My ancestry, choking on seawater. Lost, phonetically
abandoned. Soft cheekbones. Facing eastward. Always.
Any time some variation of my name is uttered a dead
slave rises from behind my ear and pinches the skin red.
At the border between Zambia and South Africa: fresh.
Someone pronounces my name correctly for the first time.
All that is left in the space bounded by home and history
is longing. The hyphen between African-American. Super-
imposed identity. I surrender a piece of my body every
time I am asked to place root. Interesting enough to inquire.
All the mistakes of the Atlantic reside on my face. Nameless.
I’m sorry, I don’t have any clean answers for you.
I think the Blackest thing about me
are my eyes.
Bless how they were taught to keep moving.
To seek truth.
To always know what’s coming.
about Ashia (they/she)
Ashia Ajani is a queer Black storyteller hailing from Denver, CO, Queen City of the Plains. Black environmentalisms is their modus operandi. Her cat keeps her humble.
twitter and instagram: @ashiainbloom