Danez Smith Quotes

i want to say something without saying it
but there's no time. i'm waiting for a few folks

i love dearly to die so i can be myself.
please don't make me say who.

I was here, by my own
water, singing a song I learned somewhere

south of somewhere worse. that was when
direction mattered. now, everywhere

I am is the center of everything.
I must be the lord of something.

what was I before? a boy? a son?
a warning? a myth? I whistled

now I'm the God of whistling.

Do you know what it means to be that beautiful & still hunted & still alive?
Who knows this story but the elephants & the trees?

Who says the grace of a black man in motion is not perfect
as a tusk in the sun or a single leaf taking its sweet time to the ground?

they've made you a boy
i don't know

replaced my friend
with a hashtag.

desire was warm recently

shot from inside a body
into a body, strange

little birth, happy death
ritual, sweet lord

i've seen thy wrath
& it taste like sugar

lay thy merciful hand
around my neck

little black boy on the bus with his toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there

i was his secret until i wasn't
alive until not. outside our closet

i found a garden. he would love it
here. he could love me here.

one day, the boy with a
difficult name laid with a
boy who shall remain
nameless in the sun & they
rolled a round waiting for
something to burn. the next
day, the boy with the
difficult name woke up in a
blue sweat, walked the rim
of the lake & though nothing
burned, something was
growing from the ashes, for
mosquitos flew away from
his skin, ticks latched onto
his ankle & turned to smoke,
weeds & willows bowed
green spines to him & he
swore he heard the dirt
singing his name

saying it right

I invited him over and he stayed forever. I feed him all my bread, the old peppers turned to mush & fluorescent mold, the chicken thighs unthawed & boneless. He ask for more so I give him my left leg. He ask for more & I give him my lungs & lips. More still, and there goes my bladder. He eats it all, all of me, eats the whole damn house, & I live forever in him or maybe it's the other way around. I swallowed. I swallowed him whole & didn't even notice him thrashing inside me.

i've left in search of a new God. i do not trust the God you have given us. my grandmother's hallelujah is only outdone by the fear she nurses every time the blood-fat summer swallows another child who used to sing in the choir. take you God back. though his songs are beautiful, his miracles are inconsistent.

history is what it is. it knows what it did.