psalm 191 or how I test-run faith at the edge of a switchblade

when I’m being frank with my lover, I tell her
love begins like ice. my friend just shoved his

mother into red earth & his agony is ripe, it falls
off his mouth like yellow mangoes in the winter.

brother, on my tongue, every language I speak
onto heaven is guilty of blasphemy & unbelief.

I am subjected to prosecution. I await the blade
same way a nemesis awaits the fateful day—

which, most times, never comes. today, I have
a head hanging loosely on my neck. I have

axis & direction. some days, I have limbs plugged
into my body’s sockets. I frog from pond to pond,

pondering the essence of my being. my father’s
body is an intersection of many borders. he found

home in the wrong countryside. everyday feels like
a desert—I camel through my grief, alone. I hear

the voices of guns echoing in my head. like every
other boy in this country, my life is a book for survival.

our lives, altogether, a bible. & in every chapter of
every boy’s book, there is this story of him being

stretched to his breaking point. the difference, though,
is the mechanism, the technique of hanging on.

my body knows agony like it knows the weather.
yet, I have no immunity. no homeostatic regulation.

tell me, which antibody combats these afflictions?
in a dream, I leaned in to kiss a girl, but I woke to

the news of a boy declared missing after he slipped
through the trigger-happy finger of a local cop.

my joy, always at the bottom of the cup. I really
do not mean to stain every metaphor with physics,

but in this country, grief is the center of gravity
pulling every boy towards a miserable memory.

& this is how the story does not end. at the
shoreline of the sea, someday, the land awakes

unsoaked in crimson. I awake, a mouthful of kisses.
at the awakening, someday, my cup overflows
with joy. someday, my cup, overflows.