Every moment sounded like smoky back rooms and corners in Wicker Park still got Black before dark. Jazz was like a tongue on your neck, finger tracing collarbone. Incense, bidis, and chew sticks looked earthier between full lips as substantial as unbroken ciphers or bulging notebooks full of curled pages springing with rhyme (and other acrobatics found in our mouths) while seeking some elusive word to replace violet, the broken skins of blueberries, the sweat never concealed by cigarette smoke, unexpected names when silver terrarium shrinks into microphone head.
Amplification blooms into Larenz Tate playing Darius the poet in his hometown, and the story soon lands on Nina, played by Nia Long (Nia’s daddy is a poet in real life). They woo, fuck, fight, separate, and she returns to the small stage circled by spotlight. She is a photographer fresh from New York City in a perfect white shirt. She wears smoked cherry pout. Her poem rings in the heights of the everglades, and Darius? He is silent, like the rest of the audience until Nina heads to the exit. She tosses her journal in the trash before palming the door, and he follows, pleads wait and she looks back like women always do.
Before the kiss, he insists love is (more) serious than a muh… Nina is silent when their lips are clasped again in a romance we waited for, now on television on random nights. We sit through interruptions hawking soap, chips, and jewelry to think that love could render familiar and still be slick, lit umber nights.
