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.

Credit

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.