Across the World

**read landscape on phone for accurate line breaks**

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Pt 1: Come Back to Me

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Is loneliness irrelevant once you love yourself good enough?

At what point, for anyone, is that amount of love true enough?

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This is a place where crickets and roosters raise their voices

and we can sit with the quiet between us that grew enough.

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I cried last night not because of how lost I felt when you left me;

it was how you blossomed me like a flower that was blue enough.

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Here there are mountains that interrupt clouds and reach to parts

of the universe where the people in this world aren't prude enough.

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I can't put back inside all that you brought out in me, the freedom

of sweetness and innocence, but was my lust for you lewd enough?

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They exist in a town where PRIDE doesn't exist and despite it peace

persisted, or maybe the town didn't need PRIDE to be peaceful enough.

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The minute you saw all of me, you made the world less lonely for me

and more free to be me in ways those before you devalued enough.

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I don't know why you didn't give me the one and only chance I wanted,

to show you your poet, Ali, was worthy and had been through enough.

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Pt 2: Go Find Her

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How much self love does she need to make

loneliness become irrelevant?

Can't she have intimacy, too, for her own sake?

Let's just say she has a penchant

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for a loneliness that's irrelevant.

She is a woman full of heart.

Let's just say she has a penchant

for refusing to tear herself apart.

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She is a woman full of heart.

The world sipped and spit her back out

for refusing to tear herself apart.

She expected she would have a falling out

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when the world sipped and spit her back out.

Every other day, month, and year

she expected she would have a falling out.

That's just how it was for her since she lived in fear.

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Every other day, month, and year

the world treated her body like a whirl wind.

That's just how it was for her so she lived in fear.

She asked herself, all of this to what end?

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The world treated her body like a whirl wind

again and again and a toy to be discarded.

She asked herself again, all of this to what end?

It was the world that rewarded

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again and again bodies as toys to be discarded

and the universe that made the world seem small.

It was the world that rewarded

her belief that she was only a beck and call

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and the universe that made the world seem small.

The universe gave her the gift to challenge

her belief that she was only a beck and call.

Since she has a heart that won't let her seek revenge,

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the universe gave her the gift to challenge

the world's ability to contain her.

Since she has a heart that won't let her seek revenge,

she makes a remedy to stir

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the world's ability to contain her.

How much self love does she need to make

her place in this world's own fever?

Can't she have intimacy, too, for her own sake?