"Motion, or Teaching My Best Friend My Favorite Songs At the Top of Our Lungs" by Ariana Brown

for Hamze we are as dark inside as the night is, meaning, we are so beautiful most people choose not to see us, for fear of overwhelming themselves—& we are sitting in the front seat of your car, shifting toward music. we are going home, if home is the equation for to be left alone. I put my finger on the pulse of the nearest star & decide on Stevie or Kendrick. because we have so little time to reflect on the recklessness of our still being alive & underneath stars & singing, we just sing. I teach you the words to my oldest freedoms, or we scream skyfuls of threats & boasts, queued from our permissionless names, & for a moment, we watch depression unfold: our killed souls spinning their dust back into us, claiming the feet, the hands, the tender mouth. be careful what we tell ourselves— everyone I know will be dead soon, it will not end soon, it will not end—the myths we craft with hopelessness. & who ever said joy had no utility? if our homelands do not remember our names, we are both hated in this awful place, let us make crooks of our famed blood, let us refuse our bones their crackle, let us speak the silliness we inherited, let us open wide the blackest sky & release every shadow of the innocent caught in our throats, & let us revel, revel, revel in the thrilled motion of our excellent & working hearts. ————————————– Ariana Brown called us from Houston, TX. voicemailpoems.org/submit/ facebook.com/voicemailpoems x.com/voicemailpoems bsky.app/profile/voicemailpoems.bsky.social instagram.com/voicemailpoems