Bloom 2 • • • Isabelle Ri

It’s not that you break my heart my heart is not capable of shattering–hardened through years of boys like you bragging that it’s so much better with an exotic girl, like my body is your vacation house in Cabo that you can trash

and I know you’re tired too. Like your mouth just got tired of chewing me up and spitting me out, you can only eat for so long before you run out of Thanksgiving.

Maybe you grow weary because it is work to conquer. you only see things to take or tame. But everything that pours from my lips is sunlight, is truth all the sunscreen in the world couldn’t protect you from. You can’t admit that loving all of me might burn.

I willingly gave you my heart. maybe you would have taken it anyways, landed your ships on my shores dug for oil without a second thought to the damage but this story won’t end with the planting of another flag.

I am a love letter to myself and to every brown woman who ever mistook herself for a shadow in his light who ever counted her words like calories as he grows plump on her silence. Our compromises are not weaknesses. We have toughened our skins to violence just to feel love’s touch. Know that when you leave me, you do not leave with my dignity. I am the first to conquer this territory. you the white man.