It was such an honor to be a part of Inua Ellams’ Falling Into You RAP Party at Lincoln Center.
My life used to revolve around poetry & poetry readings, but as I shifted to writing more theatre, then film & TV, that side of me slipped away. I was nervous to come back to the stage, but it was also so invigorating. To be able to write and tell the story you want to tell without endless meetings & edits & hoping & being okay with the fact that 18 execs may read your work, but it will never go past words on a page.
I wrote this piece in response to Celine Dion’s If That’s What It Takes. I don’t think I could have written this before now, and I’m so glad I had the chance to do it. Thank you, Alice Huzar, for giving me great notes on tweaks that really made this sing. Thank you, Erin Davis, for filming. Thank you to everyone who came to support in person & to all those who reached out to cheer me on from afar. And thank you most of all to my husband, who inspired me to write about our love story.
If That’s What It Takes
The songs she sang taught me love lives best between the shadows,
Slipping into back alleys, bathroom stalls, a dark corner of a basement.
Shh, don’t tell my—
His eyes stare too long, too hard, and I stare back,
his pinky brushing mine when he passes me my drink
–it’s the start of a perfect love story – him and I, me and him
Dancing that will-they-won’t-they dance for weeks, just on the edge of being –
Then one night, when the party ends at his,
the whole lot of us finish the liquor in his fridge,
and one by one our unlikely chaperons slip into unconsciousness –,
until it’s only me…and him.
A moment away from a turning point, a dive off the cliff's edge,
a yearn turned to consummation —
I see neat rows of lotions and perfumes perched by the sink,
byproducts of the ghost of a woman he said vacated their relationship,
traces of domesticity free of dust as if her absence was merely days ago –
instead of the months he said she abandoned him.
Feet turn to snails, I inch back toward him,
His eyes missile-lock on mine.
My conscience cries for space between my intakes of breath
But I want it gone because why shouldn’t I fall?
Ignore the history of Facebook photographs or the dreams once dreamed together,
Ignore my best intentions in the guise of a love that I’ll give without getting,
If that’s what it takes?
I see in his eyes that I have to be okay with his hand on someone else’s hip,
a new number slipped into his phone.
A New York moment of screaming beside a taxi cab: “I like you.” “I like you, too.”
Until we drive back to an apartment the size of his bed,
him nuzzling my neck, his hand on my thigh,
teasing a skirt edge, my most professional,
that soon decorates his beige apartment floor.
Our bodies glide, a storm rising –
until he whispers, “I like you, but I shouldn’t.”
His expectations handcuff me until my shoulders pop,
my hands go numb, my borders become boundary-less, because this is love, right?
Messages on read, another chase, another wish unfulfilled,
bending til I break ‘cause if that’s what it takes…
If that’s what it takes for him to love me…
Then I’ll fold my heart into tiny pieces
Rearrange my life until I freeze and
Cameleon me, so mirrors reflect a stranger
Crawl behind the yellow wallpaper,
the patterns a cage holding me tight against him,
his breath in my ear: Isn’t that better? Isn’t that –
Yet, my perfection is never perfect enough
I stay still, a charcuterie board of heart, and flesh, and soul
Because how can it be mine if he wants it?
To give it to him before he picks me to pieces,
a carrion crow plucking a once shiny thing until it dulls,
until my bones glean through gashes and I forget the real, the feel of me.
Because that is love, that’s what she told me.
It’s whatever it takes. Whatever it takes for him to love me.
And then… There was you.
Something… someone unexpected.
You taught me love isn’t a hostile takeover.
We don’t need a third-act breakup.
The storm is not only mine to weather, it’s ours.
Every day is a grand gesture of you letting me be myself with you.
You taught me ‘I Love You,” isn’t a tactic.
There’s no coin needed for Charon’s crossing, ready in my pocket as I wait for another death, another ending to cling to, a memory of a dream I can’t let go of.
You see through me, through smiles that cover the pit I keep digging,
the one you jump into –
to stand beside me, to help build a ladder piece by piece,
so we can climb out, side-by-side –
You help me smooth out my creases as I unfold myself,
stretch into being, reshape myself into the shape of me,
the me I didn’t know I could be, would be.
The weight of you unfurls me.
A fight is a conversation and not the end.
The couplet of us is a column of endless stanzas
repeating and repeating into future iterations.
Truth is the currency of our love story.
This – this is what it takes – the two of us walking this path together –
My heart beating in rhythm with yours:
I am enough, I am enough, I am enough.