Smaller than myself
I was a hundred and fifty-six pounds When I met you Could cross the span of an ocean In one, two steps Filling up the space of myself With all the things I knew My preference for backwoods And ice-cold Minute Maid Prone to spilling myself into open arms And rebuilding my muscles So I could cradle my loved ones
My stomach was full So full that you could not see the several bones Shielding my slow beating heart My lungs blackened by A tobacco addiction And years of standing too close to the flames My arms would jiggle My legs and pussy talked to each other Smushed together in the close confines Of all my torn jeans I was a hundred and fifty-six pounds of guts and ass Personality and self-respect
In the months we spent Dancing around each other’s tongues And coloring our hometown with the waters of our pleasure We used alley ways and park benches as our beds Walked the streets of downtown until the sun rose over the Hill again And we crept back between government buildings Into the cervices where darkness goes to be held And secrets become monies I traded alla mine for a little bit of yours Until you were rich on the most intimate parts of me And stuffed on my past While my stomach grew closer to my back
You would’ve drowned in the depths of me All the sorrow I unfurled at your palms The stories I was willing to share The corners I revisited So you would never again be starved for affection You surely would’ve been swallowed by me Had I not lifted my chest from the ocean floor And cradled you in the sun’s light Where we managed to stay— Me, arched toward the sky You, spent on my belly— And pass the days together, alone Sessions and Intricate dancing around anything fulfilling Lies, secrets, and gas station food
I was a hundred and fifty-six pounds when I met you One thirty-three when I left Starved for everything you couldn’t give Angry and cold in nothing but my skin and bones Who would believe I’d spilled all my substance Into a burlap sack with a hole in the bottom Wasted my breath on reluctant ears and sheets and funnel Only to be standing in a shallow pool of my own tears With a rumbling belly and an ache That could only be soothed In time
Ama Akoto (2018)