adorned, facing a burning world by Kioni Shropshire-Maina

I wake yearning eastward, no—further eastward. I go out under

strobing yellow lights to see a white-tunicked man tease a wild

guitar. the music weaves between my eyelashes and flows out from

the bottom of my feet. I am at the end of the world. the sun blares

a bright orange. I take as many scarves as I own and wrap them

around my head and shoulders and arms. come evening I count the

tomatoes shriveling in the fridge and think too much. back east, my

grandmother pulls the fattest green bananas from the tree. I go out

again to watch a smooth-faced man soothe a wild, raving crowd.

he dips, his hair riotous and radiant, the sun blazing through his

gapped teeth. I am in love with the whole world. I am in love with

every man who crosses me. I find sand under my tongue. banana

leaf in my bed. wear gold rings on my fingers for five days to ward

off black cats and evil eye. tie beads around my waist when I can’t

find a rosary and count the prayers across my hips. once they told

us adornment was sin. I glue ceramic and gold to my hands, trace

black around my eyes and sleep fitfully. we greet each other at the

end of the world, kneeling. imagining ourselves in the pretty

country. the moon full and fat and high in the sky.

Kioni Shropshire-Maina (they/she) is a third year university student from NY, currently living in Los Angeles and studying history at Loyola Marymount University. They write to explore their identity as a Black queer person, to honor their heritage and to form community. They are most recently published in Poetry and Pose: An Anthology and the River Mouth Review. They can be found @kioni.moraa. The cover art for this piece, by Ellika Edelman, can be found on THE VISUAL.