We dug our graves with our bare hands,
carved our tombstones with lines of our
favorite poems. We chiselled nostalgia
into stone, made warm homes out of
our inevitable demises.

We the ones in love with the melancholy
of verse. We the ones infatuated with
guilt; we fed off the bittersweetness
of forbidden longing and called ourselves
and each other lovers.

But sometimes
I think
we were never lovers.

Sometimes I think we never possessed
one another.

Sometimes I think I grabbed and pulled
at that gravel with what I could never
tell was only the ghost of you.

There are chapters in our book even I’m
not sure are true.

There are verses I don’t know if you
wrote or if I wrote them to you.

There are poems with so much life that
I can’t help but wonder how either of
us managed to pen them when we were
always dying of hunger.

There are lifetimes before you that I
can’t even remember.

I want to know if you remember.

I want to know if you recall exactly
how you felt that night I buried my
I love yous in the back of your neck,
how I tripped on the syllables until my
tongue tied the words in knots that slept
on my palate until they fell asleep
under your skin.

It took courage to speak them out loud
and I could never find bravery anywhere
within me.

My weaknesses ended me.

I want to know if you remember the way
I clenched my fists that night in November
when I finally breathed that sigh of closure.

I don’t know if you knew it was over.

I don’t know which one of us picked up
that shovel and filled up those graves
to bring redemption a little bit
closer.

There’s so much I still don’t know.

There’s still so much inside me that I’ll
never get to show you.

There are so many poems underneath my
ribs I’ll have to hold inside as secrets.

I’ve made my peace with this.

But I want to know that when you teach
your children of the beauty of love
one day, you’ll think of me and all
of the things that we wanted to but
couldn’t be.

I want to know that even then when the
memory of me is lying deep within the
debris of your youth, you’ll still think
of me when you speak of intimacy.

But still some nights I’m kept awake with
the fear that you might have never been as
near as I thought you were.

Or that you might have been just a ghost.

An illusion at most.

To my yet-to-be-conceived daughter.

When they tell you that you have a void in your pants in place of your independence, you will tell them that your independence lies in the creases of your fingertips and at the tip of your tongue.

When they tell you that there’s a bulge in your chest in place of your freedom, you will tell them that freedom beats at a steady lub dub  beneath your ribs.

When they tell you that you are a forbidden entity and bound you to chains shaped by their sick society, you will tell them you are as holy as a baby’s first breath.

When they tell you that you are one third of your male counterpart, you will tell them that your head will always be held as high as your brothers’.

Never lower.

Never sheepish, never hesitant.

You will be stronger than a lightening bolt. You will not be blind. You will wave away diamond rings and find your own shine. You will marry your dreams and solemnly swear I do to the stars nestled behind your eyelids. You will be fearless.

Your passionate nature will not disable you. The length of your hair will not define you. The curves of your silhouette will not make or unmake you. Your voice will be as loud as a lioness’s roar. Your hands will always keep slaving away for more. For better.

You will be better. You will not be afraid; you will not depend on luck or your ancestors’ names. You will not be degraded; you will not stand down. You will make something of yourself and always stand your ground. You will never know what it means to be thought of as “less”

– like I did. Like my mother and my sisters did.

My little girl, promise me that you will never be silenced. Swear that you will never allow your tribe’s honor to burden your back. And when the whole world rests on your shoulders, never allow your knees to kiss the floor. Invite it in wholly. Let it sink into your skin. It will disappear in shame once it sees the universes you hold within.

I don’t know you yet. And we may never get to meet.

But I know that if you come to be, you will get to bathe in your own brilliance. You will dress yourself in grace. You will care more about your future than the color of your nails.

I will watch you soar up into the sky using wings you’ve built up all on your own. You will show everyone that there is wisdom in your voice; not shame, and that there is beauty in your face; not disgrace. I will build you up with bricks I’ve had thrown at my face.

I will teach you to be human. I will teach you to be kind.

I will give you all the strength in me that I have had to hide.

You
will
be
    divine.

And when they feed you hideous lies, darling, and when they tell you that you are a diamond or a pearl in their eyes, tell them that’s not what you want to be.

Tell them your mother taught you that you are a woman.

Elle is a Writing Club project. Learn a little bit about her here.

When we met, you told me that
you got called “bitch” about
five times a day and that it
came with the job, your ears
now numb to the agony the
daggers shooting out of everyone’s
lips meant to inflict. You
said you’d gotten to the point
where your expectations had dug
a hole so deep, it reached the
other side of the world and
that you’d wished to jump into
that hole, wished to end up
anywhere but right here.

It was that melancholy in your
eyes that reeled me in. It poked
through me like a hook and pulled
me towards you and I didn’t dare
deny its wishes. You pulled me out
of the dark realms of the ocean with
the strength of a hundred starving
fishermen and I shot out and into you.
In your eyes, I planned to create
galaxies where I would name all
the stars and planets after you.
I’ve watched them sparkle and light
up darknesses I could have never
recovered from without your aid.
Love, you wore that sadness on your
limbs like a super model but in love,
you are the most beautiful thing I
have ever laid eyes on. That night
when you’d pushed your needle
into me, you injected me with more
than just black ink, and when you
drilled it against my skin, you colored
oxygen deep into my lifeless arteries,
you inking your exquisite name across
my veins without my approval. Every pore
of my flesh fell in love with your
touch, my love. Love, I knew from the
moment I met you that this is where
I wanted us to end up. I wanted
you, and I was broken in a way that left
nothing in me whole enough to be halved
again, so I wished and I waited,
– arms extended and heart as heavy
as silence – for the moment you’d smash
into me hard enough for all my pieces to be
called together again, to be pulled together
again by your illustrious grace.

And now I stand here before you, and
my Elle, I take you – ink under my skin
and burn burn burn in my heart. Every
inch of my skin will tell our story.
This is my body, and this is your canvas.

Use my skin to tell the world everything
you want about us.