Loving a black man feels like chewing glass. Drinking air. Fighting blood.

Since you’ve been gone Nkem, I am not so sure what hardens me more. The days I spend wondering if my name and our shared memories still rummage through the quiet parts of your wonderful mind. Or the nights I must now waste imprisoned to this bed without you.

When a person lies to you once all you can think is what else. What else are they hiding? What other untruths have been said?To your face, to someone else; behind your back. And how. How do you begin to clean out this room in your heart? Unearth the love? Wash the walls clean white?Undo their stench from your blood. Their stench from your skin. And how. How do you begin to detach from them. And the you in them. And the I in us.

Immigrant women with half hearts leave part their minds at home. Immigrant women with full loves hardly love their lovers fully.

Obi’m, I sometimes worry that you may die before I do or abandon me because I am too much woman to handle and you are not enough man to handle me. So last night, while you slept I gathered myself back into my body. Scraped the remnants of my heart off your sleeve. And withdrew my feelings of deep affection from you.

Suffering awakens.Time reveals.Love heals.

Two becoming one. Fighting reverently to become two again but never at the expense of the oneness they had both once battled to achieve. This was love. A moment in time with a person once a stranger, now telling them all the intimacies of your quiet little life. Wanting to see every city their eyes have ever touched. To do with them all that excites you.

The issue with seeing a man for what he could be is that you never fully accept him for what he now is.

The war began after I had placed him on a pedestal. My expectations were only leading me to more disappointments.First I tried to fight it with denial then I tried to fight him with my words. I did everything but accept that he was not the man I thought he was.