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Eyes glued to backs of blue hats seven rows
ahead in shaky takeoffs. Knowing his
hand-squeeze needs – thinking of oxygen masks and switching seats and… you look up from

writing this poem to realize You’ve missed locking eyes while he stands to let the window seat
slide past. He’s slinking back into the middle. You look up from

Pride and Prejudice to find you’re in love and a wife
And the wedding gifts were not written down and your poem is incredibly ineloquent because
you looked up

Love poems on poetry.com and none of them fit the love you two have because none of them are
by you about a phenomenaly mundane experience that no one looked Forward to but is wholly
yours. You look up from

5 feet and seven inches off the ground to meet his eyes seven inches above yours as you did
yesterday before you were a wife, and you realize that you’re a wife.

Milk is milk
I Like your skin
Soft as silk
The way your being
has always been.
Your hair it grows
Out of your rich thoughts
That’s why they always nurture
The nature you bring
sting the bees
with your sweet sin.
Not so keen to talk about it
But Close closer you are
Than my very own keen.
As I lean in disrupt
And my blue lava erupts
I look at you my honey
In this polluted weather
Of mine
Milk is milk.

Once there was a woman in the night forest
who could hear above the register of most.
She would listen to mice sing in chorus
or coyotes comfort their young
over the flash and rumble of coming weather.

There was the night when I stayed in the garden
late into the hours and you called for me
and together we watched the gods
toss stars across the sky and later
we returned to our bed and I watched you
over the vastness of our pillows
as your breathing fell into a rhythm
and you separated from me.

Have your dreams returned you to a wooded place,
dusted in moonlight, where you keen your ears
to other selves, selves beyond the register of my knowing?

I hate when cannibalism is used as a metaphor for love.
I think love is a form of devotion which does not include devouring. Maybe
hunger and
sometimes bruises or
sunburns
but never devouring.

I wrote in a poem once that I am a liar at the best of times.

I hate when cannibalism is used as a metaphor for love
except maybe I get it.
I wake up
wanting,
wishing,
that she’d cut her fingers on my teeth.
Hoping she’d force me
to gag
on her blood, to drink from her
like a
deranged marionette she controls.
I watch her talk and decide I want to kiss her
until her lips bleed,
a sorry excuse for Ruby Woo,
smearing across her pretty face
until she looks less like my love
and more like my victim.
She would taste like iron and honeysuckle
sweet bitter love blood liquor
and I would be drunk on it.

I want to leave handprint-bruises on her hips
leave my mark in any way I can and hope
she bites my tongue and we bleed—
into each other, not on each other
and there is a difference.
Is it cannibalism?
All I want
is for her to become my lover.

Silk tangerine sheets dance melodically
as reflections of the sultry moon, gleams
through the lofts balcony, under-shadowed
by the soft lip presses of two sexually stressed humans
pressed against their saturated melaninated skin
pressing old buttons during the practice of procreation
sifting out past lumps and bruised egos for a smooth
path for the new year and new beginnings
with old issues and reforming lumps

bedridden from the magical experience for one
the other has things come to light as the sunrise
pries over the ice capped mountains and through
to her heart realizing she wanted his warmth
and company to bring in the new year and nothing else
she grips her amethyst crystal necklace, pressing a final kiss
upon his innocent forehead, pissed as she strolls toward
the empty parking garage, under-sized heels in hand
she stands waiting for her ride home, lonely

he wakes up and places his warm hand on the cold
form left in his bed, her scent is still fresh
he plans to wash her from his memory for good
a magenta lipstick message on his mirror startles
“DON’T PLAY WHAT’S THERE,
PLAY WHAT’S NOT THERE”
he grabs his Kind of Blue album she gifted him
the Mary Jane provides company as tears cut
through the smoke, listening to “Blue in Green”
he visualizes her amethyst crystal from the
purple haze, lonely days commence again
but he reluctantly says “So What” as the street
orchestra plays in the background of his pain
like a Spike Lee Joint

they will meet between the sheets
on a future new years day
‘Round Midnight

they put a curtain up for my c-section
before throwing my guts on their table
i can hear the splatter
the blood on the floor
the wails of a child
cesarean born.
i can’t look.
i tune out the sobbing
trapped in this bed
i feel a hopeful touch
but my sex drive is dead.
i run my nails across my skin
back, shoulders, breasts, and arms
it all comes off blue and gray
i rot but there is no visible decay.
i’ve done so much shit wrong today
i have an itemized list
but at least i was too lazy to slit my wrists.
i want to, but my neck is so stiff that
i can’t look.
i don’t even know if the infant is alive because it doesn’t cry anymore
its skin could be smothered baby boy blue
or fevered baby girl pink
if it dies, then so do i
connected by a shoestring umbilical cord, so easily untied
but i can’t manipulate my fingers
out of their death grip on the particles of stale air
to separate our malformed souls
so i guess i’ll have to wait until the refuse of my ovaries turns gray in its grayer crib
or the string finally decides to unthread on its own.
until then,
i can’t look.

unas palabras para el vato que quiero
a piece of mexican love, from my chicana heart.

mi vato, eres lluvia
eres mi tristeza y mi crecimiento,
me haces sentir diferente cada día,
aunque mis emociones terminan siendo las mismas,
te quiero, podría declarar fácilmente bajo cualquier juramento –
eres tu, vato, el que tiene mi corazón.

yo sé que tu sabes –
pero también sé que el recordatorio no hace daño.
así que por última vez, mi vato, te quiero.
sinceramente,
mia.

spraying the muscular perfume
on his biceps and triceps
validates her womanhood

seven nights of perfume
fills the room
with diaries of a lovely perfume

the scent of perfume
embellishes every night
like midnight in London

united in mind
the power of perfume
connects the two in red wine

silky as perfume
is a perfect vision
for the power of love

spraying the perfume
on his biceps and triceps
is the study of perfume

the breath of perfume
inhales and exhales
in the room that is her perfume

A poet whose words illuminate the heart, Athullya Nair explores the nuances of love, growth,
and the wonders of life in her work.

I don’t speak or understand Español,
But when you said; “te amo”
I knew what you meant right away!
I looked it up in the internet
And turns out you are ‘mi amor’.

The love of my life
Gave me a first clear sign!
Oh god! Is my face turning red?
Is the sun too hot?
Why am I sweating so bad?

But you said it in Spanish
That’s a fowl! and you know it.
Now I’m confused whether to respond or not
But my head is screaming
I love you I love you I love you!

I

Every year I spend December
in your bedroom,
where we lie in gentle lights
and watch the snow
and shrieking city sirens.
We touch and we listen,
see meaning in each flurried
piece, quiet flakes of creation
soft and unsullied.
How still the world can be,
you tell me in wordless
whispers, shadows on your skin
and sweat on your lip. You hold me
in rag shacks of sheets while I try
to fight off sleep. Fluttering
around us, the snow glows
and gathers and thinks,
heaps itself in another,
folded into one
and nothing at once.

II

Many things I struggle to string together
into a lace of words that will please you.
Watching you, I am pulled and peeled,
shorn in two and tugged apart by
forces far beyond my furthest fences,
things I do not understand
but must explain to you.

To touch you is to be a piece of you,
coherently mirrored,
creatures of a species.
Your presence unfolds me,
fingers like fate and hands
that hold me,
rock me into a world
that feels real.