Intimately Alone

Intimacy for me has been...
What the thickets of cotton
Were to slave hands,
What the settlers
Were to stolen land -

Unrighteous.

Heated moments of identity crisis.
Lost to faceless men
With public privates.
I needed something.
I received nothing.
So I learned how to love on E.
And loved on me
With scraps of reciprocity.

I know yall know what I mean.

Intimacy has been...
What project homes
Did for our kin.
Keeping bodies warm in dead of night.
Still freezing cold from deep within.

I guess you can say… 
Intimacy for me
has never been.