I used to pray
like a man filing reports.
Thought if I got the details right, 
folded my hands just so,
spoke like I meant it,
and memorized the verses like passwords,
I could win God’s approval
like a performance review.

I worked hard at faith.
Clocked in.
Cleaned up.
Didn’t ask too many questions.

Even my doubt
was dressed for Sunday.

Stillness was a task
I added to the list:

Drink the tea.
Lower the voice.

Call it peace.
Fake it if it doesn’t show up.

I brewed chamomile
and tried not to shake.
Sat on the edge of the bed
with my jaw locked and my spine straight,
as if posture could summon
the Holy Ghost.

But the ghost didn’t come.
Not the way I wanted.
No glow. No wind. No comfort.

Peace came
like a man late to his own funeral:
mud on his boots,
grief in his eyes,
and a face that looked
a little too much like mine.

He didn’t say a word.
Just sat down
and let the silence
fill the room like smoke.

No music.
No breakthrough.
Just breath.
Just weight.

And something in me cracked
like an old door
that finally gave in.

I let the prayer fall
without grammar.
No shape.
No beauty.
No performance.

Only the sound
of a man too tired to pretend
he’s not tired.

And that
was the holiest thing
I had ever done.

Now, I know
rest doesn’t reward effort.
It doesn’t come
because you earned it.
It waits,
quiet and steady,
for the moment
you stop trying
to deserve it.

It doesn’t applaud discipline
or show up for good behavior.
It slips in
when you’ve got nothing left to prove,
nothing polished to offer,
nothing left but breath
and bare hands.

Rest is not the prize.
It’s the floor you fall to
when the ladders break.

And peace isn’t soft.
It’s not polite.
It doesn’t care if you’re ready.

Peace is what stays
when everything you built
to impress God
finally burns down
and you don’t rush
to rebuild it.

We just wake up at 3 a.m.,
staring at the ceiling fan,
like it might whisper an answer.

We just sit in the car, outside our home,
with the engine off, music low,
trying to remember if this is a place
we are allowed to rest.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just hear our father’s silence like a hymn,
and carry weight in our chests like a birthright.
A weight no one sees,
a weight we’ll never put down.

We just feel like our mouths are loaded guns.
Every syllable a misfire.
Our tongues, tripwires.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

That’s what they slip into our pockets when we’re boys.
Fold into our hands like a blueprint,
tell us to build something strong out of it.

Black boys don’t get anxiety.

We just have to stop all that crying.
Grow up. Fast,
like the world’s already tired of our childhood.
Trade toy soldiers for real battles,
quiet ones, inside.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just grind our teeth down to dust,
we just have pressure in our heads,
we just get tension in our jaws, so tight,
we forget we ever had mouths that could pray.

We don’t pray enough.

Black men don’t get anxiety,

but our bodies keep shaking
like they’re screaming.
And our mothers keep calling,
like they can hear it.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just need to calm down, need to relax,
need to stop making everything so complicated.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just smoke a little bit,
we just drink a little bit.
Fuck to forget our name for a while.
Drink a little more to forget hers too.

Black men don’t get anxiety.
We just have a fear of commitment.
Hearts that learned to love
with one foot already out the door.
We just need to open up more,
but not too much.
We just need to be more vulnerable,
but not too vulnerable.

We just need to be men.

(but not those kinds of men)

Strong Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just laugh at the wrong times,
jokes sharp enough to slice open the parts of ourselves
that ache too much to even touch any other way.

Black men don’t get anxiety.
We don’t have a reason to be nervous...
what, are we guilty or something?
Are we scared?

Real Black men don’t get anxiety.

We get attitude problems.
We get trust issues.
We get emotionally unavailable.
We get hard to talk to.

We just need to stop being so negative all the time.

Positive Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just check the exits when we walk in a room.
Sit with our backs to the wall.
Memorize every face in the room
that stares too long, and stands too close.

Call it how we were raised,
call it survival dressed up as instinct.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just don’t say what we need,
we don’t ask to be held.
We don’t admit her warmth frightens us more
than any empty street at midnight,
than any red and blue siren,
than any white judge’s gavel falling.

Black men don’t get anxiety.

We just wake up mad.
We just wake up tired.
We just wake up anyway.
At 3 a.m.
Staring at the ceiling fan,
like it might whisper an answer.

The moon is a lazy voyeur
peeking through blinds,
draped in the sweat of our second chances.

You smell like the end
of something I never wanted to survive.

I was stitched together by quiet women,
ghosts who pressed sugar
into the mouths of screaming boys.

They told me:
Love slow.
Love foolish.
Love like you’ve got time
but lose it anyway.

You enter like a hum,
your voice the color of dusk
if dusk could ache.

Your hands,
cartographers mapping
what even I forgot I buried.

I was a kingdom before you.

Now I’m just a hallway
that leads to your name.
I let you in,
not like a guest
but like a storm
I prayed for in secret.

You keep tenderness
in your back pocket,
pulling it out
when the world gets too cruel
for my soft armor.

And I,
I learn how to unbuckle myself,
shed the versions of me
that flinch when kissed.

We don’t speak in futures.
We whisper in nows.
We dance in the dark
watched by our regrets.

You pour more of you into me
like fire,
like you were made to undo
the silence in my bones.

And baby,
I roll into you like the night does the sea…
slow,
certain,
drenched in God.

And wanting
nothing
but more.

She was peeling one-
slow, methodic, like it hurt her.
Like the skin was someone
she'd loved once.

Her fingers trembled
in that way sorrow makes holy-
the devotion of keeping it together.

How women are taught
to cry like saints:
quiet, citrus-sweet,
and alone.

The bench was wide enough
for two.
The sun was kind.
The world, indifferent.

In another world,
I might've sat beside her,
offered a tissue
or a scripture.

But in this one,
we make churches of avoidance.
We pray by not interfering.

Her eyes-
black galaxies
rimmed in salt-
met mine
for a moment too long.

And I swear
the universe
cleared its throat.

I learned young-
eye contact was a gamble.
Too long, and people got nervous.
Too short, and they’d think I was hiding something.
I was.

Mirrors were unkind.
They fractured me before the world had a chance. 
One eye drifting east,
the other one loyal.

Betrayal in every reflection.

I knew my angles.
How glass twisted me.
How symmetry was a privilege I would never know.

Why won’t it just look straight?

The first time I heard the word lazy,
it wasn’t about my hands,
or my legs,
or my heart.

Adults were careful. 
Careful with looking,
careful with asking,
careful with the way their pity recoiled
when they turned back around to face me,
realizing I was indeed speaking to them.

Kids weren’t so kind.

Photographers: 
“Look into the lens.”

As if I hadn’t been trying.
As if I hadn’t spent my whole life wrestling my own gaze.

At night,
I’d squeeze my eyes tight-
so tight, my nose curled.
And my cheeks hurt. 

I’d hold them there,
as if maybe, just maybe,
by morning
they would wake up
and finally agree.