i like the way

it’s your voice

i don’t want to be friends

your voice

alone

drives me

nothing is safer

than the sound of you

build me into your life

lie me down

lay me open like a map

the rest of your life

if you are not enough for yourself

unknowingly and everywhere

abandon the thing you want to keep

you must be kindest

don’t mistake

salt for sugar

your mouth has the gift of reading

my tongue is sour

how can our love die

even after the hurt

that’s the

thing about love

This piece is composed solely out of phrases taken randomly from rupi kaur’s (2015) “milk and honey.” This is another gem of a book, purchased from Vidya Bookstore in Accra, in 2018. More recently, I have also thoroughly enjoyed reading kaur’s (2017) collection, “the sun and her flowers”.

kaur’s (2015) poetry is succinct—right to the point at the tip of one’s love, pain and shame, as well as all the hope of ever learning to be whole with or without the evidence of someone else’s love. For as kaur reminds us, it is clear that there is

the idea that we are

so capable of love

but still choose

to be toxic (p. 23)

May it not always be the case for each-and-every one of us, especially in such terrifyingly difficult and dangerous times like these. Instead, let us be inundated with as much love as we need, and then some.