radiance and eternal youth are the purest of qualities in a woman. i see you soaking up every hour as it comes. carry me beside you in a handbag, dogmark my praise in your history books. i beg you to whisper taboos as i lay down at your feet, drinking up all you share of your studies. call me down beneath the storm. let me recite you like a war story, and kiss you brighter under ceremonious fanfare. give us netflix original coming-of-age hits where for once it is us, main characters, energized by histories of each other, by whispers in the fresher airs of gods almighty and repeating every word that spills from our tongues. your amber-tinted gaze warms a hypothermic home and bathes it in hymns. a dimly lit little room finds itself radiant between our lips. when we venture on across the starless sky, i promise to preserve you in amber, to refine your extant fossil.
Magi Sumpter knows a lot more about women than they do world history. Their first chapbook, "LITTLE ROOMS WITH BAD LIGHTING," is forthcoming with Ghost City Press in Summer 2021. You can find them or their literary magazine on Twitter @MagiSumpter and @SouthchildLit, where they simp over beautiful women and beautiful words, respectively.