My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 91

By
MEHA
SEMWAL

On the Eve of My Return
I dream of our reunion:
I’ve forgotten how to kiss —
no electric peach fuzz, no
freckle frisking, just —
perverse: (adj) per-verse,
of, or pertaining to, poetry.
The disaster is irreparable.
Instead of celebrating we sit 
for a serious while. You want
and I don’t. I think of bonobos
in an unsexy zoo. The piranhas
are hungry tonight, ribcage
flesh to chest. I touch yours.
Your heartbeat is erratic,
I diagnose you with a flutter, dire
symptom of chronic affection.

90

My own heart is still: just a cinnamon
lisp, a faint tremor, a terminal unlove.