If you will not
love me
I will speak out with my heart
in protests and songs,
my longing cries
for your suffocating hold—
that lovely, bittersweet embrace
which I call my home!
If you will not
love me
I will surrender myself
and throw my knees to your feet,
meet with these bloodied lips
your boots; this claimed world
of which you rule upon—
unfurling your love!
If you will not
love me
I will abandon myself in chains
for I would be yours forever;
relinquished in vain
possession, entwining my body
to yours, lying at your side
through my throes of anguish!
If you will not
love me
I will forsake myself unto you,
succumbing every part of me,
unmade for but a time;
all that surrounds you, all
that is breathed, a soul emanating
my hopeful passion—O beloved airs!
If it were
only enough;
my disparate difference of skin,
my torched legacy born within.
My life sentence collapsed,
bleeding with no better reason
other than to undo me in treason.
My world knowing
only your tread and beauty,
living in the same bruise.
To cross your borders
would be to desert all else;
my tongue, my face, my name, my sake,
I would lose all to be with you—
If it were only enough
for your insatiable appetite.