I want to wax poetic for you

And tell you in fifty different ways how deeply I care for you

Deep like a James Baldwin quote

But all I have are balled up notes

Filled with scribbles of misbegotten thoughts I attempt to convey in some clever way

I try my best to steer away from the cliches

Because

You are worth more than red roses and blue violets

Low valleys and high mountains

I want these words of mine to enter your heart and pump through your veins

And erase all evidence of any hurt and pain you may have been harboring on the inside

Setting it free like I hope one day Assata will be

As free as the truth that dispels the lie

These words don’t have to rhyme

I can dress them up in prose

Letting them fall from my lips

So easily

Like how Phonte did that one time

And no

I didn’t mean for that to happen just then

It was just happenstance

Just as what happened when we were once strangers on a collision course with fate

Trying to slow down a train that only wants to accelerate

Encumbered by futility’s embrace

I want to paint a picture with my words to illustrate how I feel

But I’m afraid that my rendering may be too abstract

So

I will take this canvas of complexity, color it with simplicity

and simply say…

I love you

Written by iMuse Ngobuningi (pronounced ee-MOO-seh)