1. When a White Man Is Loved by Me When I love a white man, he does not know the scale of it at first. He sees my body—tall, dark, broad-chested— and maybe he sees beauty. Maybe lust. But not the altar I am building beneath his name. He does not yet feel the hush in my chest when I touch him like I mean it. Like the world didn’t teach me to turn away. Like I wasn’t taught to protect myself from the history in his skin. But I do love him— like I love my people: with depth, with fire, with the unshakable quiet of someone who has buried too many but still sings. He looks at me, and sometimes he thinks he’s loving me back. But I can see the hesitation— in the tremble of his fingers, in the way he searches for a metaphor instead of saying my name. I become the sermon he listens to but won’t carry home. Still, I give him more. I let him fall asleep on my chest, and I don’t say it, but I think—this is the safest place you’ve ever been. And when he weeps—if he weeps— I know it is not sadness. It is recognition. It is his undoing. It is the first time the ghost of empire has been kissed quiet.