utopia
by February Spikener
after Danez Smith
here, i am everything i have never been. a girl
on the porch waving at all her friends, popping
gum on beat with the earth & i can rollerblade.
i smile. i laugh.
where we lay bodies to rest, a bunch of tulips bloom
in their place. we never see each other fully dead.
we are here for everyone’s life.
i am never in search of anyone who looks like me.
they are always here. my mouth. my hair.
my body. is theirs. is ours.
everything belongs to me. to us.
i no longer need to fly or change myself
into a feather to be held.
i am always held.
my grandmother & her two daughters &
my mother & her two daughters sit together again.
it is february & my paper heart is not burning.
it is february & we have softened the cruelest month.
here, i am loved the right way the first time.
here, i let myself be loved.
here, i know that i can be.
here, we are not broken.
not trying to reassemble a wet box with a single string,
not lying about a piece of ourselves that is missing.
you don’t lie to me,
& i believe you.
here, make time for me.
i am the only star in the sky,
the first tooth that broke like it couldn’t wait
anymore to know the warmth of your mouth,
just a little bit. i saw everything
i never had in your voice.
& i can say ‘no’;
here, they don’t die if i say no.
i am all that i’ve ever wanted to be.
i’m a child at the end of the day
because i have asked for more time & gotten it.
i do more than reassemble puzzles of people.
i am not anyone’s one thing,
i am everything. i am enough for me.
i am not trying to make myself
feel full.
here, i have no fear.
i am more than the ugly part of me.
the ugly parts of me. my rage.
my guilt. my loneliness. is not ugly.
i am not ugly.
here, i am everything i have never been. a girl
on the porch waving at all her friends, popping
gum on beat with the earth & i can rollerblade.
i smile. i laugh.
where we lay bodies to rest, a bunch of tulips bloom
in their place. we never see each other fully dead.
we are here for everyone’s life.
i am never in search of anyone who looks like me.
they are always here. my mouth. my hair.
my body. is theirs. is ours.
everything belongs to me. to us.
i no longer need to fly or change myself
into a feather to be held.
i am always held.
my grandmother & her two daughters &
my mother & her two daughters sit together again.
it is february & my paper heart is not burning.
it is february & we have softened the cruelest month.
here, i am loved the right way the first time.
here, i let myself be loved.
here, i know that i can be.
here, we are not broken.
not trying to reassemble a wet box with a single string,
not lying about a piece of ourselves that is missing.
you don’t lie to me,
& i believe you.
here, make time for me.
i am the only star in the sky,
the first tooth that broke like it couldn’t wait
anymore to know the warmth of your mouth,
just a little bit. i saw everything
i never had in your voice.
& i can say ‘no’;
here, they don’t die if i say no.
i am all that i’ve ever wanted to be.
i’m a child at the end of the day
because i have asked for more time & gotten it.
i do more than reassemble puzzles of people.
i am not anyone’s one thing,
i am everything. i am enough for me.
i am not trying to make myself
feel full.
here, i have no fear.
i am more than the ugly part of me.
the ugly parts of me. my rage.
my guilt. my loneliness. is not ugly.
i am not ugly.
February Spikener (they/she) is a Black femme poet from Detroit currently residing in Chicago and is an MFA candidate at Randolph College. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in 'Muzzle Magazine', 'Poet Lore', 'So to Speak: feminist journal of language and art', among others. Ever inspired by their loved ones, their poems reflect how they navigate through the world and what it means to love and be loved. She believes that love is and has always been the answer and that the mastery of love is a form of survival.