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on kissing my mother’s
dead face
i slept in your spot last night
expecting you to come in beside me
i lay there
under not enough cover, shivering
trying to earn enough suffering
so you’d be owed to me like a debt
the universe has stolen my skin
found out that i didn’t appreciate you
that i was exasperated and impatient
that i wanted to fix you
i know that there is no death
only punishment
the universe has stolen my skin
and now i walk around with my insides showing
like that child i was the night
i realized i would have to die
yes, even me
you smiled a sad smile and grabbed me by the wrist
kept me from fleeing
held me there and told me through my tears
that i had to die, too
i decided then and there that i loved you too much to
live without you
“mama”, i said, “i’m gonna die exactly one second before
you
that way, i never have to live without you”
i have sat with you in waiting rooms
taken you to pharmacies
we tried to buy time and it cost $5.00 a pill
i have had talks with you about god
and i have lied to you about my faith
thinking it would keep you here
the universe has stolen my one true love
my husband says his dead father is in the air.
that he spread out like a smell that grows more and more
faint
yesterday he said his dead father is in the pool of
ancestors
awaiting rebirth
i don’t know where my dead mother is
she wasn’t in that body that lay so still beneath the
pulpit
she wasn’t in her bed last night
she will not come to me in dreams
rationalizing
agoraphobia
he is ruining the blinds in our house — the fearful man
who lives with us
haunting our windows like ghosts
peering out at our black neighborhood,
index finger and middle finger
prying open the street’s horizontal lips so
he can peak out at its pornography
the retired teacher across the street
started coming outside in her underwear
now her son is selling the house
he is opening life like forceps
examining what can’t examine him back
the preacher next door is raising his
grandson who is desperate to prove
he is dangerous (the man who lives with us thinks he
steals from us at night)
i cannot prove that life is not
a hungry mouth
i cannot prove that people will
not uncover the wounds that
caused you to stand behind yourself
and steal glances at love
none of the blinds will close
all the way
the fearful man has ruined them
and now he frets that life
can see inside. |
