"did you miss him" by Justice Ameer

the knife glides through honeydew and i thought i loved

the sweet silence of a fictitious kitchen until my oven

bed ran out of heat, no sooner than the bar became an

omen of nights without compression, he was my pillow

and i prefer my cheek against a soft rhythm but know

i only remember him as the prophet who brought me

jessie reyez on repeat and then martyred himself

into the villain of her song, you see, i miss the music

of a good morning text and i reminisce the careless

steel against skin yes, my septum has healed from

our trust exercise, from bawling needles into his

shoulder when i learned how his tongue swam

in a beautiful lake that did not have my name

which just means i don’t hold it against the water

anymore, or maybe seeing him in the distance is

the same as forgiving the horizon for stealing my

days before i make use of the daylight and so

i lie with a liar’s longing on my hips asking

myself if i was too hard on a foolish boy or

simply too giving in my desperate theater, i’ve

always mirrored the girls on stage who command

applause with desire, but if you want to know the

truth, he talked too much, even at the club i’d stick

my foot in his mouth just to hear the beat, though

now i beg glass-faced gods to send me someone,

anyone, please somebody who wants nothing more

then to feed me their minutiae in prose and kiss me

in the creases i’d forgotten, on my body only air

rubs me gentle and even then, it’s a windy day or

the kind he hated, and i still remember his voice,

how he could talk about slicing fruit for hours but no

i don’t miss him. i miss having someone to be bored of.

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Photo by Anthony Brooks

JUSTICE AMEER is a poet, facilitator, and political educator in Providence, RI. Xe is a co-founding member of blackearth collective + lab. Xe is a two-time Providence Grand Slam champion and a member of the inaugural co-champion team of the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam. Xe is a Pink Door Fellow and Faculty member, and xe was an Artist-in-Residence at Williams College in Spring 2020. Ameer co-created the theatrical production ANTHEM with Chrysanthemum at American Repertory Theater’s OBERON. Xyr work can be found in Split This Rock, the Academy of American Poets, POETRY magazine, The Nation, and various anthologies and journals.

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