Do not ask/
/family about love/
because then who would/
believe in it?/ Not a generation born/
of trauma-fed roses/ I have witnessed/
enough relationships/ die/ in the living room/
To not trust/ I am still a bright-eyed brown girl /
dreaming/ Forget/ the ceremony and dress/ Let’s/
make liars of lineage/ Let love/ A self-taught currency/
Make a mercy of us/ An endless well/ The only condition/
There will be times that/ we make forest fires/ of old wounds/
/Strike / Familiar battlegrounds/ A Trial by gasoline/ Bedroom of/
switchblades/ Guaranteed/ we will get messy/ in our genetic makeup/
But/ we will be stunning/ And so tender/ The Sun falls off the bone/
The Sky is jealous/ On the days all we have/ is smoke and heaving/
anger/ Can we make a museum out of our softness? /Mount every
apology/ we have ever been starved of/ Spoil me/ in peach fuzz/
and soft landings/ I will meet you/ under every streetlight/ I do/
Not pray for symmetry/ Just religion/ in allowance of falling/
There are 99 names/ of ways I want to become dust/
With you/ It will not be easy/ but it will be choice/
Make faith here/ To hold and be held/ To be/
flawed and be held/ Til my ribs touch/
like dead lovers. I can’t live/
without you/ but I can’t/
die either/
Asma Abike is a poet, painter, and teaching artist from Charlotte, North Carolina, by way of Houston, Texas. Her identity shapes her work as a first-generation Nigerian-American Muslim woman. She is the inaugural Blackberry Peach National Slam Champion (2022) and a finalist in national competitions, including Women of the World. Her poems have been published in the North Carolina Literary Review, she is the 2025 winner of the Jaki Shelton Green Poetry Prize, and has been featured on Button Poetry.
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