She likes that she says that prayers do matter she found these “in my mother’s house” (she never says your grandmother) she says prayers speed or retract to bring you back whatever you sent out she puts up with her tomorrow we could all be dead life is short do what you have to do it’s wise if we don’t have regrets about things you may find yourself in need one day the law of the universe what goes around comes around I gatta get summa dem doe boys now you know das African food if you don’t get some joy out of life you ga be miserable
She doesn’t know why I left the other one who sees the dead was too young to be sent off to boarding school stayed home to witness though they lie about not knowing what happened in there say they were in the yard, playing, shooting marbles while they question how that wife to the sissy boy could not know they’ll all be drunk tomorrow she says must be crowded in that grave I think they have waited for each other to keep cozy
second wife of second wife Rebecca was of course a name I loved after Charlotte it was my favourite maybe it’s because in the period novel– though I would never have called it that on the other side – in Manderley, the jealous second wife could never outclass her or on account of the unwavering survivors down to the house and all I can empathize with feeling cheated and ramshackle though no one has been hard-core devoted to me like that I did have a murderous husband, once I could commiserate with being vexed by undeclared sinister white women wound up with desperation conjured up amorous entanglement and carryings-on driving one mister to tearful disconsolation
◆
Was your mother phenotypically Black? Really means:
- You don’t look Black.
- How could someone who looks Black have a child who looks like you ergo you aren’t Black and your mother must not have been Black either.
- Maybe you’re lying about your mother being Black.
- There is an acceptable level of melanin for Blackness.
- There is an acceptable level of melanin for claims of Blackness.
- There are acceptable folks who are the arbiters of Blackness.
You don’t know I know this privilege I know this reading I know this loss
To not be read alongside my mother any more.
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A reliquary
I spend countless hours days minutes years now but
I’ve counted them seventy seven thousand eighty eight three thousand two hundred twelve four million six hundred thousand twenty five two hundred eighty trying to write my grief begin deathwork to find you
Wish more often than is well-thought-of to join you
allow myself to be talked into
one
breath
at
a
time
impervious to persistent betrayal holding the heavy-heartedness
dreaming divination tools a fortified connection to spirit made
manifest in rocks as the key to collective transcendence
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Author’s note: Lists, enumerations are by nature misaligned with a protocol for talking to the dead, which is itself a disjointedness. More than 6, less than enough how can one ever enumerate with any finality the steps to dealing with the insidious toxicity that transcends embodiment?
