Noon

[The Nollywood Designer.]

If I could love you in the dark,

then I should love you in the day,

under a sun bright enough to

witness secrets lingering between the ribcage,

where I lost my heart to you.

I should be able to also love you in the morning,

even at noon,

between whispers fashioned from yesterday's fears.

I should love you between insecurities

and the lines I crossed to erase them—

because loving you is an act of rebellion,

a symphony of sin I’d play again.

Here, where the light dares to burn

the sins that sweat out of our skin,

I would claim your body

with the fervor of a prophet

calling fire down from the heavens.

I would press my name into your palms

so that every time you raise them,

they remember me—

they remember us.

I want to love you where it hurts.

On the fault lines of your doubt,

in the hollows of the silences

you’ve buried in the pit of your stomach,

I want to dig my fingers into your ache,

hold it, kiss it,

and tell it to rest.

If I could love you in the dark,

then let me love you where the moon watches,

jealous, of how you eclipse everything.

Let me love you under stars that have waited centuries

to witness a love like this.

But also—

let me love you

under the fluorescent hum of a hotel room,

in the stillness of a car seat,

against the cold press of a kitchen counter,

on beds made or unmade by indecision.

Let me bruise the air between us

with the violence of longing,

pull your breath through my teeth

until it becomes mine.

Let me break your name on my tongue,

syllable by syllable,

as though spelling it could summon something holy.

I should be able to love you without apology,

without the pretense of quiet,

without folding us into the small spaces

society gives lovers like us.

Let me love you on rooftops

where the world can see how your back arches

when the fire in you meets mine.

Let me love you in alleyways,

on balconies,

at the edge of cliffs where desire shouts loudest.

And if I could love you in the dark,

then I should love you in the rain,

where we are baptized by the rawness of it.

I should kiss you between thunderclaps,

drown in the storm of you,

and let your name be the only thing

I gasp when I rise for air.

I should love you like a feast—

mouth open, hands starving,

taste spilling down my chin.

I should love you like I don’t know restraint,

like I am naked,

like I don’t care who’s watching,

because they should envy the way

I make you feel seen.

If I could love you in the dark,

then I should love you where shadows dare not tread—

at high noon,

under a sun that sears secrets into ash.

And still, I would take you—

take all of you—

until the earth forgets how to spin

and our rhythm becomes the only motion it knows.