Nov 2020
Whenever I see a sunflower I think of you. No matter where we lived, in the summers you’d bend your back to the earth beside our porch step and you’d raise magnificent flower beasts with their rough stalks, edible seeds, and gentle yellow petals, sometimes it seemed you cared more for them than you did for me.
Whenever I smell peaches I think of you. Not real peaches, but that dollar store lotion you would buy. You stopped wearing it after your sixth child, after your light grew dim, and we thought it died. I found an empty bottle of this lotion in the heaps of our rubble on yet another evicted moving day, its plastic insides held the smell of you before you started to hide. And in my garbage bag suitcase I hid your memory away so that I could find you again at the next place.
Whenever I cross a mosaic path it stirs an image of you breaking glass, pressing transparent cuts of colors to wet cement slabs, I would revel in awe of your art, your makeshift thrown-together crafts, and now I can not sit in a church beneath stained glass without your face replacing mother Mary, but I am no Christ figure, and you are not so Holy.
Whenever I see a drawing of the sun I think of your tattoo. A black flaming sun, eclipsing the spider beneath its place, chiseled into the bark on your back. Is this the same spider you saw above my cradle as I slept? You say it was a massive thing, crawling toward me, stopping you dead in your tracks. You say this spider popped into a puff of crystal spects, that you ran to me and saw nothing but a resting baby. It took you years to finally cover the spider on your back, but when you finally set the sun in its place you forgot color from your blaze and cut in the black. Maybe this is why I was born with embers in my hair, my locs are the ancient flame you lost from your belly. My sheath, my skin, pale porcelain, can only thrive when kept out of the sun’s sight. Did you tattoo yourself with this in mind?
This whole world reminds me of you. This is both good and bad. I could have never avoided your poison, less I were never born. You gave me nightmares and lost my heart in boxes every time we moved. You showed me bright colorful beautiful things, like the mosaic glass, I first saw you lay it out in patterns catholic saints would admire, and with the very same shattered frame you cut your face in front of me. That was a horrible scene, but it taught me something. That suffering and beauty can have a thin line between, that tragedy can become the art only I can bring. I know from you, my only true mother, that people are both good and bad, that the world is forever holy and evil all at once, and that there is nothing one can do to prevent casting great pain onto those we love the most, but of all these extremes and places in between the only thing that exists on every plane is the love we have for each other.
Whenever I smell peaches I think of you. Not real peaches, but that dollar store lotion you would buy. You stopped wearing it after your sixth child, after your light grew dim, and we thought it died. I found an empty bottle of this lotion in the heaps of our rubble on yet another evicted moving day, its plastic insides held the smell of you before you started to hide. And in my garbage bag suitcase I hid your memory away so that I could find you again at the next place.
Whenever I cross a mosaic path it stirs an image of you breaking glass, pressing transparent cuts of colors to wet cement slabs, I would revel in awe of your art, your makeshift thrown-together crafts, and now I can not sit in a church beneath stained glass without your face replacing mother Mary, but I am no Christ figure, and you are not so Holy.
Whenever I see a drawing of the sun I think of your tattoo. A black flaming sun, eclipsing the spider beneath its place, chiseled into the bark on your back. Is this the same spider you saw above my cradle as I slept? You say it was a massive thing, crawling toward me, stopping you dead in your tracks. You say this spider popped into a puff of crystal spects, that you ran to me and saw nothing but a resting baby. It took you years to finally cover the spider on your back, but when you finally set the sun in its place you forgot color from your blaze and cut in the black. Maybe this is why I was born with embers in my hair, my locs are the ancient flame you lost from your belly. My sheath, my skin, pale porcelain, can only thrive when kept out of the sun’s sight. Did you tattoo yourself with this in mind?
This whole world reminds me of you. This is both good and bad. I could have never avoided your poison, less I were never born. You gave me nightmares and lost my heart in boxes every time we moved. You showed me bright colorful beautiful things, like the mosaic glass, I first saw you lay it out in patterns catholic saints would admire, and with the very same shattered frame you cut your face in front of me. That was a horrible scene, but it taught me something. That suffering and beauty can have a thin line between, that tragedy can become the art only I can bring. I know from you, my only true mother, that people are both good and bad, that the world is forever holy and evil all at once, and that there is nothing one can do to prevent casting great pain onto those we love the most, but of all these extremes and places in between the only thing that exists on every plane is the love we have for each other.
