We lay in the summer heat,
windows open.
You asleep, and me
listening to the morning prayers from the distant mosque
mingling with your deep breaths.
I wanted to kiss your knuckles then,
caress your hands soft so you’d feel
me when you hold yourself.
How I love, I love, I love you.
I also, sometimes, want to lock the door.
Mount security bars on the windows,
to not let in or out.
To keep you
here, suspended in time –
an unbroken body on white sheets.
But I don’t.
This is compromise.
Instead, I scribble my love onto your postcard body,
suture our address into your skin.
Send you into the world and
pray you’ll always return to me.
The peril of loving a black boy.
To live on hope, and hope, and hope
you’ll come back home.
Linn Björnsdotter is a writer, performer, educator and editor from Sweden. She debuted at the Swedish National Poetry Slam Championship in 2012, and has since then performed on stages all over Sweden, Scotland and South Africa with her award-winning work. Her writing explores how socio-political issues take hold in the body of the individual. Currently, she is working on her first collection of poems. She doesn’t like bios and hates having to participate in a capitalist system that requires her to market herself.