For Whitney by Johnna Parker

sometimes / i dream you free / alive / almost sixty-two, ferociously gray-haired and / without any bruising. / sometimes i close my eyes and see you still / holding robyn’s hand like that one photograph of the two of you / the clarity of the water around you reflecting onto your sunglasses and concealing your eyes / in love, i’m sure / and two popped bottles resting, empty on the table. / couldn’t have been the champagne that made you hold on so tightly. / sometimes / i pray you shameless / how your household prayed you what you weren’t / and maybe how / you prayed before you handed robyn that bible / a slated blue that i imagine a thrown brick in the palm of her hand / i imagine it with edges gilded / manifestations of your mother’s royal love / i imagine the pain materializing a solid pillow / between you and robyn / in your shared home / how, at times, you must’ve taken turns climbing / over it. how it became yours to share. / and sometimes / i open my ears and hear you screaming through the years / of self-hatred and imagine that i know what you wanted / to be dancing in a living room / through love’s stumbles / with the woman who loved you. / and is that image what you want? how / i seem / to have frozen you / in time.

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Johnna Parker (she/her) is a Black femme poet/writer from North Carolina. She is a senior in college studying English and creative writing. Her work has appeared in Haunted Words Press, and is forthcoming in HOMIES, The Faoileánach Journal, The Afro Noise Project, Djeli Journal, Opal Age Tribune, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s literary and arts magazine, the Coraddi. You can find her on Instagram @ _johnna.nicole_  and on Substack @ anxiousblkgirl.