Make Love to Me Like We’ve Never Known Violence

Like every leaving wasn’t a country

that seceded from your body



Like every lover wasn’t crossing

your wrists in trouble’s rolling light



Make love to me like your people were never

stolen, like your blood has never been a question



of belonging. And I will make

love to you like a river unbraiding



our countries, like the mind of the ocean

remembering your name.

Copyright © 2023 by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. This poem originally appeared in The American Poetry Review, December 2022/January 2023. Used with the permission of the author.