She reminds me of geraniums, red bleeds into pink
and white like the color of her nails in December
when she wants to make herself happy,
though the sun is low in the sky.
The world looked as if we are all that was left,
kisses echoed off the grass and fostered fog at our feet.
The tips of her fingers were like tiny wings
extended to my neck, a supple palm.
When I talk to God, it is about her. I know He listens
in the evening, when her lips slide up to singe my ear,
speaking love and life and
fear of Him into our bodies.
We grow like weeds beneath crooked, angry toes
that run underneath twisted trees.
We are quiet, underground lovers who write
forever on blackened knees.
And when the moon scales the sky to reach its post,
we bathe in shallow puddles, naked and green where
all can see. She kisses me, like geraniums, red lips
and pink breasts under a white crescent.
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Khadija Ceesay (she/her) is a queer, Gambian poet from Olathe, Kansas. She is currently an undergraduate student at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas and will continue on to graduate school at PSU to study creative writing. She has been writing poetry since 2014 about her sexual and racial identity in order to understand herself better and owes much of the ideas behind her work to her relationships with family, both good and bad.