[Originally Published March 19, 2010]
Two days from now, during the 13 day congregation of those eternally lit by the arrival of the solstice,
I will honor the anniversary of my Aunt’s son, my cousin, my spirit, my brother,
the active voice breathing within me, who was taken away from us tragically at the hands of those who do not understand the privilege of their hands…
I fight
to remember the silence at my dinner table
out of which my mother speaks your name for the last time I’ve heard in a decade,
the female tone
of a grieving country.
I borrowed those thinly carved images
from death
so that I may struggle against it. These words are my struggle.
My mother’s words have moved from dark rooms through dormitories, bed sheets stained with kissing the cold thing, like driftwood stilted on silence
floating through, over, in between, a different version of you.
It’s not enough to be careful
to remember you
I can’t say
strongly enough that I’ve tried to remember
but your image,
her words,
their implications stand
on every street corner
waiting and watching for you
to wake up and seek the hard streets of the world calling you back
but I’m blind by hate at times.
And those who warn of me of the poet’s reckoning
take cover,
because it’s never ever enough
to simply marry one flash-in-the pan word with another.
My words have no stories, no songs, no mercy, no beauty
they neither run, nor hide, nor take back the cover
to chide as relentless
as the silence of my dinner table the last night I ever heard your name harmonized, dear brother.
and where the words find you, as relentless as I’d expect you to be
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