remained.like.this

we stopped talking during desperate housewives
and on commercial she expressed her desire to become one
but she never trusted my promises 
and my skinny jeans no longer bent at the knee
so we remained like this

we held tight to text messages and stored them in hidden folders
beneath layers of animal print thickness we’d read them while the other snored

her blackness learned to dwell peacefully between my fingers
I explained blackness to her from eyes of a Senegalese girl
so she relaxed her hair and insisted that I pull from the roots

she told me race was constructed
so we trashed the latex
and I no longer grew beanstalks outside in the dirt
I planted seeds at the crack of dawn when the sun came to visit
and only at home
she wanted to love the parts of me that grew in the lower parts of her

we prayed we’d give birth to a daughter
so we’d never run out of water

and we’d remain like this.