“I know we're not everlasting--
We're a train wreck waiting to happen.”
-- Lorde
We're a train wreck waiting to happen.”
-- Lorde
Friday, Ca-99
by Khalypso
after Hanif Abdurraqib
garden highway carries a car into the heart
of the hood, forgets its name, & picks back up
on the way to Chico. every bottle on that road
is broken & so is the sunlight. which is to say
that we fell in love between the corn husks;
ducking between shadows & shards of heaven,
holy hedonism we chalked up to the ignorance
of our fathers. we witnessed the angels make
love, birth music we mistook for morals, sing
platitudes we called parables, & exchange wetter
kisses than the residue we left in our mothers
the day we first greeted the unfairness of a fresh,
perishable life & i don’t know why i’m trying
to fuck you into a forever with me; why the world
stops spinning & i can’t find my breath
when i imagine a future without rings on our fingers
& laughs shared on each other’s backs.
i love you so much
it hurts to think about
you dying someday.
garden highway carries a car into the heart
of the hood, forgets its name, & picks back up
on the way to Chico. every bottle on that road
is broken & so is the sunlight. which is to say
that we fell in love between the corn husks;
ducking between shadows & shards of heaven,
holy hedonism we chalked up to the ignorance
of our fathers. we witnessed the angels make
love, birth music we mistook for morals, sing
platitudes we called parables, & exchange wetter
kisses than the residue we left in our mothers
the day we first greeted the unfairness of a fresh,
perishable life & i don’t know why i’m trying
to fuck you into a forever with me; why the world
stops spinning & i can’t find my breath
when i imagine a future without rings on our fingers
& laughs shared on each other’s backs.
i love you so much
it hurts to think about
you dying someday.
Khalypso is a Sacramento-based activist, actor, and poet. They are fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and an agender badass. Their work can be found in ANMLY, Rigorous Journal, Blood Orange Review, and Shade Journal, as well as a few others. Their chapbook, The Hottentot Lights the Gas Herself, was a runner up for the 2018 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. They are the 2019 Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate, a Leo-Virgo cusp, in need of more friends, and you can find them on Twitter @KhalypsoThePoet.
