Let my city remember me like I lived there

My slang fit ears like a splinter, so when I speak

I watch my mama’s skin tear

Kick a rhyme, and it moves like winter air

My thinnest years were spent in suits that didn't fit me, scared

Of dyin' like my friends or family or teachers or students

Grim Reaper might not touch you yet, but he’s mentally abusive

My eyes were ruins. I cried and shook my shoulders through it

My girl rubbed the back of my neck--mourning's what I'm used to overdoin'

Smoke polluting my living room, lit a fuse, and the hallway flooded with litter fumes

Letter from my superintendent. She’s tellin' me to quit the booze

I hope my shouting wasn't the music my neighbors listened to

Sticky Fingaz in my headphones. My notebook a dead zone

In high school I was writing "this is the end" poems

On endless loop, brain spinning like the Forgiatos

Of an upended coupe. Talk is cheap

Unless you’re tellin' expensive truths. Stories left in loops

And bunny ears. I was dumping squares on my tennis shoes

Letting loose, cutting clean, touching dreams

That disintegrated in my hands before I could trust them things

When rain hits the curb right, you can hear the gutter sing

Submachine under my chest. Blood on my neck

I did so little for money and so much for respect

My dough wasn't even crawling when I tried to run up a check

So I take my Ls graciously when I play the dozens with debt

So broke I hurt in places I didn't think hunger'd infect

Never more than the sum of my flesh. Knuckles indented

Punching a message into the sun 'til it sets

I coulda been a drunk. For all intents and purposes, I was--and a bet

On who I coulda been was the under, but my lady loved me instead

The homies loved me to death. My family loved me in spite of

How little I saw them and how much I repressed

Humming through air--my voice is soundin' like it's under a jet

Messiah gave me the beat, and I gave him my memoirs

Magnums of rosé, a Monet, and a Renoir

Though I'm feelin more Magritte or Bearden:

Put an image where it shouldn't be, or pull from everything to build a collage of spirits

And when the metaphors don’t work, all that’s left is the truth

R.I.P. to the rillos I dropped to their deaths on a stoop

Shoutout the Delfonics songs I drank my medicine to

Five years ago, my blood was two-hundred-seventy proof

A student died--it was three-eighty. A friend died--four fifty

A friend died--five hundred. A friend died--six-sixty

My uncle died--seven-hundred. A student died--eight-thirty

A friend died--nine-hundred. A teacher died--nine-twenty

A teacher died--nine-eighty…

And then my uncle died...and then a student died…

And then my cousin died…