With These Four: Keep me in Mind by Atiya Imani - HTML preview

Coasting Parks the Size of a Million Ghettos

You look like you been running

On the run with your feet tryna’ get your feet to slow it down  

With all the bags lugged, all the playing catch up

You be carrying loads that be handicapping you to put them down 

Like garlic cloves all around you 

now you out here thinking you really aren't beautiful and that no man will ever want you, like your mother- the bags guarding around your heart like garlic cloves for voiding off vampires

You got to stop running, baby

You got to stop using stand ins in your temple

Then crying when it gets invaded

Lake Michigan, on foot

From California is hard on anyone

you've been there to back like a cipher

By the wrinkles and blood cuts on your hands and sweat stains on your forehead; the holes in your shoes and how limp your knees move

We can tell you've been running

Keep death off of your tongue and the devil’s tongue off your temple

I don't know where you think love has been, but I can tell you it ain't in running

This aint that 

This is playing cabby to a star 

Nonstop like 1 New York minute 

Adorned like a medallion on the flesh of your purest intentions 

I’m learning that your intention been need base 

Not as urgent when you’re living your days to forget me 

Until you realize you need my love to remember that you may be worthy of someone else’s 

I have lived in the walls of your ego --cramped in shadows with open wounds of your arrogance

Been scrutinized for loving you --and still loved you 

Been sorry--and been bruised with my own boxing gloves 

You have managed to idolize me as a great idea 

It’s like your chest explodes with emptiness and you seek ammunition 

You have managed to use me for blame, the reason behind your actions and praise

I let you stone me -- think what you tell yourself as the truth

Ran through parks the size of small towns--spoke your name so loud when I knew you needed prayer--It wasn’t my unwillingness to stay that made you go 

It was what you felt, was a lack of jurisdiction 

You are the one who changed 

I would have loved you in the middle of a snowstorm or Jamaica 

Instead of understanding that you used your heart as a bargaining tool for mine 

Like I ain’t feel all that too

I just loved you enough to pull out the knife myself

     sit with the wound 

until it scabbed

fell off on its own

The question is which way would your intentions hang if you closed your eyes and did everything in the dark? 

This ain’t that 

I won’t do what you did 

I won’t love you out of spite

I won’t love you to teach you a lesson 

I won’t love you more than I love me 

I won’t love you to remember that I’m worthy

I won’t love you to remember that I’m worth it 

I will love you for real 

Because when I remember what it felt like when I looked into your eyes for the first time

How a kaleidoscope grew in mine 

You blew my mind 

I immediately questioned God 

“What about now? What about today that you would choose, to be the best day to explain love to me?” 

I had explanations growing out my pores that I stil

I didn't sweat sometimes being uncomfortable when I knew we had a lot of getting to know each other to do 

Travelled through 20 states with you in mind 

Stopped going to church on Sunday’s 

And woke up every day deciding to be saved

This ain’t the 2

This the 1

I will love you forever because this love has saved me 

Reminded me of thought 

Reminded me that I could change the world with my bare hands

Reminded me that I could save the world and I didn’t have to lift a finger 

Loving you despite your antics to keep me a slave to all that you told yourself that I did wrong has reminded me to remain; to stay still enough, quiet if I had to

 And loud enough to journey pressed up against you across miles; and through you

I wouldn't dare take what you had to learn, personally 

I knew the road would be a winding one 

The journey up—to the highest point; a trying one

Prototypes only exist when you choose to love conditionally 

I have a lot of questions for God 

“What about now? What about today that you would choose, to be the best day to explain love? 

You are the source of my love, and I will love you

I know what life does to good people 

Above that, I know what God does for solid people 

You will have a front row seat to power 

I will still call your name out in parks when I know you need a prayer 

The God in me cannot rival the God in you 

God’s don’t rival—they revere

Pride doesn't dwell; well, where love does