by Kehinde Wiley
In a painting that no longer exists // One boy kissed into bliss
by myth, who can’t remember // to see as beautiful what I thought would destroy me.
In a painting no longer // Maybe he was too calm during the taunts of the police. // “If you were smoke,” he said, “you’d be the smoke that rages from a forest fire, close and wild and dangerous.”
He is the thing that happens only once // His name wasn’t even a word. // Let him go.
