3 Poems │ Ayonote-Yusuf Mariam

Heaven Is Not For Me

I do not believe in heaven because what is heaven
If I could not love
The trees, the breeze, the mist, you?
That I would no longer wake up
In the morning
Look beside me
Feel
Your lips on mine.
We kiss the darkness away
My heart flows, swells
To bursting with ripeness of love.
How cruel a place a heaven must be
To erase
These feelings, memories, thoughts, actions
Knowing, learning how to love you
With my head, my body, my heart.
My head and heart are one
We learnt how to love as a child
We watched
The stars to learn how to love
How to give, how to shine with love
We learnt that love was freedom.
I do not believe in heaven
If it means I could no longer love you.

Oasis

Your taste is a smile,
Vanilla ice cream on a hot afternoon,
White clouds melting on my tongue,
A memory of falling in love,
Falling in love again and again
Over and over
Falling in love.
Taking a dive into an ocean of sunshine,
Wrapping my fears in a blanket of you,
Each confession, velveteen, on your lips,
Silky warmth enveloping my heart.

Your love is the sky,
Filling my lungs with the smell of warm,
wet soil,
Fresh flowers blooming in deserts,
Because your love is fertile,
An oasis of freshness, of green
Of freedom, of strength, of being,
Of loving yesterday,
today, tomorrow and the day after,
And the day after
And the day after,
Of falling in love again every second after that.

The Simpler Things

I speak softly
because without the simpler things,
We would be lost.

Where would I be

if I could not stand with you
underneath a blanket of blue
as the moons gazes at the sun
smiling down on us
stars shining all the more brighter
that they have never known love like ours
While we laugh
Just laugh,
because we are young and we are alive and we are free and in love.

if I could not hold up my palms
caked in mud
peel dirt off my skin
and wear yours
and hear the flowers whisper
that they envy us our youth
the clouds pucker up their lips
And kiss our cheeks with rain
Because we are young and we are alive and we are free and in love.

if I could not hold a butterfly,
trap it in a jar
along with all my other memories of us
and even if I were to love another,
I could open up my jar of memories
open up a smile,
kiss happiness on the lips
and remember
That once I was young and I was alive and I was free and in love.

Ayonote-Yusuf Mariam