Journey for Two by Tanisha Fanney

You make me feel like California.

Like palm trees and sea breeze and dry heat
Like West Coast streets and summertime beats in Cali.
You make me feel like home when it’s 2713.16 miles away
So let’s just take this moment and make it last all day,
Put our heads together and dream the moment away….just you and I.
Let’s go back in time to when you were the Pharaoh and I the Negress by your side
We’ll sit high on our thrones and watch our ebony kingdoms thrive…just you and I
Back in Mother Africa.
Let’s find a dreaming tree and sit beneath its shade
We’ll strip the clouds of their shades of gray
Make them passionate purple and line them with gold
Then autograph the sky with cursive rainbows.

Let’s intertwine our minds so deeply that our souls become pregnant and give birth to angels.
We can borrow their wings and see where fallen stars go.
We can find out what it feels like to kiss on a cloud, get so high on each other that we never come down.

Let’s rap, you and me, let’s intellectually flow
about Jesus and Judas and days of long ago
Let’s you and me spit about all of the classics
how Dickens and Twain ran away with the page
Let’s rhyme about how Dunbar and Hughes could take the brightest light
and recreate it in black on lines of white
Let’s freestyle a dope verse over a hot beat about political corruption
and international conspiracy
I’ll murder the beat box if you kill the lyrics,
Spit me a verse about what your deepest fear is
I’ll speak a spoken word and you can just hum,
while I recite my dream of seeing Jerusalem.

We can take a walk down my memory’s path; my past is yours to share
And later we can stroll barefoot around your future so I can leave my footsteps there.
Let’s hold hands so that your lifeline crosses mine,
we can lie here all day and re-define time.
I wanna play in the recesses of your mind,
cuz bein’ fascinated with you is my favorite pastime.
I want to stare into your eyes so deeply that they suck me in,
And while I'm there I’ll drink from your tear ducts so you can never cry again
Pull me close so I’m overcome with your sweetness and all the bitter pain in my body is relieved,
as we lay here all day and creatively pick dreams,
Or lie here in silence, when I’m with you there is no need for words, you can read my mind.
I am yours to whisk where you wish, all of your desires are mine.
You are the king for me, and I the queen for you,
so let’s travel together, this journey for two.

Freshman Tanisha Fanney hails from Oakland, California. She has won several poetry awards and was the senior editor of her high school literary magazine.