jumped!

there, on the ground like dirt or a bird december froze & may thawed, blood misted, crying for any mother, the boy who called your mama a bitch bleeds our love for you, his wings frozen & fighting the cold wind of our sneakers. we storm him because we love you & your mama has fed us & only us is allowed to call her out her name because we know her name, Ms. Jones, & she bad & only we can say that & when we bad she has permission from our mamas to beat us like we hers. we hers like you hers. you our boy. we pool our punches into the boy like quarters for a bag of flaming hots. we make him look like a bag of flaming hots. lord forgive me, but i don’t regret it. &, on the real, all these summers later, i miss it. i wish a little bit to gather around a man’s body & stomp in the name of love, beat what he said about my next to blood back into his vermilion mouth, to make his mouth a beautiful, smashed tomato. really tho. Leland, you remember how we beat that nigga? our middle school ritual, that thirty-second eternity. later, i licked his blood off my nikes & dreamed we were water lilies holding the water down. • they were around me like nigga1 nigga2      nigga3 nigga4     me     nigga5 nigga6       nigga7 nigga8 & i felt    ...    safe? what could be safer than a circle of boys too afraid of killing you to kill you? the fists that broke my ribs also wanted me to live. i praise each one true god for each foot that was not a sharp anything. i had always wanted 8 niggas on me (but not) like that. each hand laid upon me like a rude & starving prayer. after a while i started to           like it i leaned into it      unblocked my face the bottoms of their shoes were the sweet of a well-chewed eraser. i was their promise. their ink. you should have heard them laugh a language so delicious i cracked up cracked grin & all. i didn’t know a thing about love until those boys walked away so happy. my heart pouring from my nose.