To Fatimah Asghar, for Brown Girls and Red

What are the hurts that make me ache? And how do you take One piece of the whole And show it to me? It doesn't make sense without all the rest. But I wouldn't have guessed how it made me feel One part of the whole, and you've rendered it real.

What are the dreams that make me break? You've taken them all And made the bad good and made the good bad Until I don't know what I'm sorry for And what's owed to me. An ordering of the best to the worst? There's none to be had. It's all good and all bad. In the middle there's me.

You've turned it askew I don't know what I knew Or what I think of you Why my dreams are so few Why your dreams are so few Yet they make me anew.