Hey

That lanky smile on your face

Fold it

Squeeze it underneath your father’s pillow

Call his woes a bridge to your next orbit

Taste his footsteps before his night turns grey

Allow him to speak more than you will ever listen

 

White faces

White fences

White concoctions

White intentions gawking

But white finds home in the black sand too

 

How come everyone only speaks of the runaways

Soft feet, textured in the grieves that beholden 

A spade to call one’s own

Humbled knees abide

Nourish your mind with the memories of your lust

Marinate their seedlings with the shades of your being

Then exit, and

Watch every concrete door fall behind you 

 

Your mother

You hear her speak 

Even when she lies asleep in her bed

She’s only your mother because she birthed you

Screeching to the end of the rope she holds onto

She too is a fish rotating in this social barricade made of glass

Born of grief, passed on from one hand to the other 

 

They don’t write books about women like her

The ones who gather wood and light their own fires 

The demure peacocks stripped off of every feather 

Too broken, but still stretches their womb for men

 

But this woman who fathers you now

She is home for no one except for herself only

Dressed by absence, standing in for the excluded middle

Barbwired tongue

Flickering eyes

No slippers left to throw

 

She watches at your life

And goes into conversation with herself again

Tell me, which part of hers is your tail

And which of his are your wings

 

Black voices

Black impulses

Black fences falling apart

Black rivers turning utterly silent

Black is free only as long as he gallops

Black stoops too short, she bleeds again

 

Who is to be blamed for this rusting

This forever newness wavering in the distance

One too cold to have missed out on living free

When the children wake up again, they’ll trudge

Ask which side they’ll stand between our fences

 

Must we say we’ve been ambushed by our wounds

Must we say we didn’t see this coming

Must we say we didn’t see the river rising

The border dissolving

Must we