Angel & Hannah by Ishle Park (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

Epic?

A new legend to toss skyward to salt our

constellations, not one to ball

into a fist or chuck in the dumpster. Spic

n’ chink, one might call them, from afar…

but peer closer: a soul and a soul.

He folds over her like a rosebud in sleep.

She traces her finger over his sad map of scars.

If America let them, would they spin fast & gold

as a Celia Cruz classic, lilting songs into the sea?)

Ski

Lucy in the sky with diamonds, he thinks

a song his mother used to sing,

diamonds tossed in snow wink

at him like these coy, bright-eyed girls on Hunter Mountain’s summit.

He inhales the iced air, frost-trees,

and when he glides down the mountain’s soft shoulder, his

tracks hiss spume like speedboat on lake~water —

he is black dolphin! Sea hawk! Any fierce, finned, winged thing, he shears

air with silver limbs like god-scissors,

wind singing a pegasus aria in his numb ears.

This fast, he could outrace death! Or fling

himself straight into its stark eyes. Unafraid, he floats in midnight sky above

whitecaps, slopes, gravity his only compass, he’s flying past fear

to a different music now — holy holy dark angel taking wing!

Jackie Robinson Expressway

The highway is a silver ribbon threaded

through a lush hair of trees. She gets lost in its curves,

its shushing becomes her night music.

She’s older now. She drives one-handed.

She knows these turns, seen them all before.

No longer a wet-lipped girl fidgeting

in livery cabs with Dominican drivers

who reek of Brut cologne and wink into the rearview.

She rides alone. Until sky breaks open. A greening

light. An empty highway she rides between dusk and

dawn, distance and time, watching the sun anoint

treetops, watching eyes of dull apartments catch aflame.

She drives, a silent witness with no name.

Every time, it’s like being born again —

Soul

I can’t believe you wasted so much time, Wanda sighs,

and Hannah remembers now, Angel’s eyelids trembling

like sails when she rocked above him, a maidenhead

tied to ship’s helm, hit by sprays of salt water, foam, lightning.

How loving him made her learn the world —

a girl moving her fingers against the rough Braille

of welfare, food stamps, Rikers, probation. Dim, dim,

it brightens then — Bushwick, her harsh-lit

classroom rife with his tiger-scent.

How loving him, she moved

from girl to flesh to martyr to dagger

to stone to water to woman.

Yes. Woman.

And would she call those years a waste,

or a small taste of heaven in a man ~ made hell?

Aigu, Wanda. You will never know my soul.

Desiree

Years later, Angel finally gets with Junie’s lil’ sister ~ Desiree,

who had an eye on him since lil’ kid days.

With Desiree, Angel didn’t have to be “better” ~

or hide his “dirty” habits ~

he could be free ~

like he was when they hugged & screamed

& played Cocolivio together back

in the summer of fourth grade ~

they always chose to hug each other, those two ~

got three babies now, lotsa big drama love scenes too,

like when Desiree made him tattoo a dragon

over Hannah’s name

to start a new story…

While he sat under da hot pen (again),

he realized he was scripting his life

with another woman now ~

Desiree was tough, into sexy goth, punk, metal, & black leather…

she wasn’t a runner ~ she was a fighter.

She would stand by her man

and live on her block with her familia forever

and survive da rock, crack, and heroin games.

She became his new ma, and in divine time,

they lived out their own chaotic, epic Legend.

(But sometimes, when Angel was alone & high,

late at night, after three blunts, two Coronas, & in a nostalgic mood,

he wondered where she flew off to…

she was too soft for New York, he thought ~

more of a Cali girl vibe…she hated

da bars on the windows everywhere in Brooklyn ~

Ugh. Looks like cages, she said, more than once ~

I gotta get outta here ~ it’s too cold, too crazy for me…

We have choices!

We have a right to live happy!

And I’m gonna carpe diem, yo,

by any means necessary!

Hannah used to proclaim, loudly,

dreaming of Berkeley and beaches,

shouting things at him crazily

while he grins, things

she wishes she could yell

at her pressure ~ cooker parents.

He wonders

if she has babies now too, or if she

just lives free as the wind still,

untethered & lost

as a golden ribbon

unraveling from a bouquet of heavily thorned, stunning roses ~

He secretly wonders: What became of the golden girl

who whispered songs & rhymes into his ears

and wanted to become air?

Who inhaled & kissed his warm temples

and grazed his long lashes with the grace of a gazelle?

A young girl who transformed into woman

at dusk with his touch, swaying over him like coconut fronds,

riding him like ocean waves till he filled her with stars?

He felt, at heart, she was far, far away…

After he tattooed a dragon over her name,

he brought honey & white daisies

for the Goddess of the Sea

who Jessie told him is Yemaya ~

when the familia went to Coney Island,

he took a moment to walk out to where shore meets sea alone,

and silently asked the sea ~ goddess to watch over & protect

Hannah’s many journeys as white petals

floated over water, fragile & lovely ~

slowly carried out by the rippling waves.

Por amor, mi amor.)

Desiree comes up behind him,

locking her arms around

his lean, rippled waist.

He lets out a deep sigh,

kisses the mother of his three

angels on her forehead,

takes her hand, and walks

with her back to their children,

whose little hands are busy

making a round castle in the sand.

Prayers

From lifetimes away, from islands apart ~ she still

wonders about her Angel as she holds a handful

of tiny, intricate shells in her hand ~ remembering

their summer days at Coney Island Beach,

she wonders if he’s caught

still living a stoned ~ dream ~ haze

or awakened to the beauty & possibility in being alive ~

she still prays for him and his family ~ his children ~ the future generations

to inherit his heated, hunted, dancing blood. Wishes

him well from afar. And Rafi ~

sweet Rafi. Last she heard, he lives ~

lives on ~ loves on ~ so beautifully

into his teens. New medicines