Poems

Poetic at best 

The way cycles occur  

My sister reads books that were my favorite  

Found first at their age 

The way flowers fall  

Planting new seeds 

Rebuilding remaking always  

This experience of mine  

That is never singular  

No matter how unique it seems 

The way the stars know they have been here before 

The legacy of light left behind  

This life of mine 

It is my sister’s, my brother’s, my mother’s  

Never only mine 

The way the day is always chasing the night 

Living so the other can have a name 

Wisdom to travel down the line 

Nothing if not the legacy of time

        Of each other 

In absence of you

little things fill the void.

Lovers become mirrors,

something to dance in front of

mirrorballing your light.

Spinning dizzy distraction

You are not here,

lost or perhaps not yet found.

Swallowing enough to feel full.

To not think of hunger

and growing and how

everytime you think it is done,

you find yourself back at the beginning

again. Finding you

again. Fucking up

again. Existing still.

Even when you hide from it.

Aunty meets me at the bar for the first time

a friend of a friend

old enough to have seen life fully

sitting in shades on this leather couch

she guesses my zodiac sign on the first try

takes the shot I bought her with a whip of the head

dances in her seat to Tupac, so I decide I trust her with my life

The music transitions and the bar swells

as she brings out her phone to tell me,

“I'm facebook friends with Rihanna, wanna see? And Angelina Jolie” 

She scrolls for two minutes then flips her Galaxy screen to me,

showing me an Angelina Jolie fan page.

“Everyday I talk to her, tell her how I'm feeling. Rhianna as well, and she sends me a lot 

of love. Sends me pictures too. That’s me talking to her”

She says this, showing me her comments on a picture of Rihanna

posted by a news account she does not even follow 

And I nod along,

rising to the bar when her glow fades, 

another shot on me for our local celebrity.

Brother, we scrub your blood off the walls

dry the floor, ignore the weed ashes,

we’re supposed to apologize for your gashes,

ones that you caused 

scarring us all

breaking the glass on the wall

but you’re alive

so we love you still

You see red and we see you

every time, blue

you smoke and you sleep and you feel better

and we live with the scars we’re not allowed to speak of

because it hurts you

we’re supposed to praise you the little you do

and when you don't speak to us for months 

silence 

until you get a car

as if a Honda makes you

as if a Honda changes you

when you drive back home 

we love you still

and i watch you,

speak about our father

and i hate him too but not like you

so much rage in your lungs

I don’t know how you even breathe

Brother i am so sorry

for everything you have endured,

childhood grieving 

and I worry for you

and this car you think makes you a man we should be proud of

I hate your car

I hate your pride

I hate your pain

brother we are watching you leak

letting your blood spill on us

there is no where else it can go

and through it all

I try to love you still

Just like this, and nothing more

open and wet 

for a man who will use you

before he ever loves 

you, a passageway along his journey to

some foreign bitch

he will make his wife.

In this moment you could rise.

Pull from deep within and form tsunami-strength to walk away

Again.

But you are twenty, not the sea

so you let him touch you

but not fuck you 

and call that power.

And when you’ve had enough 

you send him home 

all wood untouched 

so he blocks you

Finally,

both of you dripping with pride.

I’ve never been good at endings

Everytime i arrive i go back to the beginning 

or the middle

or wherever felt like ices on the corner of 135th & Broadway 

lapping the edges of the cup

to keep from spilling

tiny spoon in hand useless until 

the end, when you want another

the bottom of the paper cup now

sticky residue of joy you once had

I’ll go back everyday,

curbside loungers watching my 

chance to start over

To pretend it never finished

like love melting

dripping into my hands

sticking to me as I try to lap it up

to put it all back inside my stomach

I just go back to the corner of 135th & Broadway 

to the middle or the beginning 

I’ve never been any good at endings

I didn't expect it to feel this empty,

The house lacking its usual sound of yelling and bliss.

The endless particles of food replaced with the dust of 

your death.

And the loneliness takes no prisoners,

its ravenous as it eats up every corner of this apartment 

and amplifies the silence you left behind.

The fake smiles can only go so far 

and when that last drop of your coffee is gone,

we all ache for the love we lost.

Sometimes moments are just that

Fleeting and eternal 

I lay on my bed

Music playing off the phone that holds this text I do not remember 

From my father I do not speak to now

You have grown so much,

Do you love me now

At times I feel like I have never changed

Still gripping your tie, still swing sets and dance classes trying to please you

This is the memory of never forgetting,

You lift that burden onto of me

I did not even notice that.

Papi, daddy, father, daddy

Do you love me I am aching,

How could you notice, 

If you enter a maze from the end 

Do you go back to the beginning

Do you need to?

Do you remember, 

There is so much I remember 

Broken homes leaking ceilings, leaking 

Not love less but a force overpowering thanks to loss, 

You left so much to over compensate for

Some of the things.

Everything, everything 

That is the problem 

I remember nothing at all

And yet I carry it around, unable to put it down

I worry this is how I’m always going to feel 

I have said to you,

We used to end calls with bye

Five minutes filled with more awkward silences than conversation 

As if you couldn't think of anything to ask the child you made but do not know

How do you feel about me, what do I mean to you

I could never hate you, only how much I want you to love me

( I cannot put that poetically)

In the past.

I was told your mom was a rough woman

Brittle and stiff

You almost take after her

The lack of correct grammar a give away to your youth

You weren’t born in America but you couldn’t tell now

Julian and I joke that people see you now and see

The perfect American dad

House, car, kids, wife by name and paper

And that is where you try not to leave us

I am overwhelmed now,

Memory is a funny thing

How it is extreme, 

All bad when it hurts because it is easier

And it is midnight so I text you for the first time in months

‘How are you’

Good!! What about you?

Open and leaking

Gaslighting myself, 

Still the same

‘Good very busy’

I imagine!!

My mom gives you updates about me 

Told you about my reading you claimed you wanted to come to

To support

I told her to tell you no

How do kids know their parent is supposed to love them

How do we feel the absence of something we never had

How did I fill this gaping hole you never really made with wanting and need

My mom tells me I came into this world crying and I think

It was in honor of you

I think I came into this would screaming your name

But you got this!!

Fully clothed, wells called my eyes 

I stand in front of you as your newborn 

Rema playing in the background- 

There is no sound as sweet as the music of a home  

You don’t even know you’ve lost  

There is no way to cry discreetly in public,  

At least not this hard. 

My words form sentences I have not even fleshed out in my head

I share with you these thoughts because I am on my period and I need you to know  

I would swallow myself whole without you and I am working on it 

You do not avert your eyes, 

Mirroring my rivers 

You say “I could never not be happy with you” 

And so I stand 

In front of you, 

Your creation, 

A puddle of curses  

You’ve created  

And I wish I had more clothes  

I wrote a piece about my father being dead because he texted me yesterday 

Said “happy new year” and though I didn’t respond to his Christmas message, I felt like I had to for this one. Because he is my father, because a text is trying, because I couldn’t ignore a third message and still blame him. It’s the holiday season so I think he remembers us more. Three texts, thanksgiving, Christmas, new years. Happy in front of the holiday, or merry for Christmas, and a period after it. We didn’t get a thanksgiving text this year so at least he remembered us this time and that is why I call this trying. He doesn’t have to send a text, he doesn’t show up but at least he acknowledges our existence and I don’t know if I should be but I am grateful. My brother texts me instead of the group chat where the message from our father just entered. Text’s me, no context because it is not necessary, says “lmao peep this” and I know he is just hurting, just angry. I wonder if he would admit that my father makes him feel worthless, like he is less of a man, like he has to overcompensate for an absence he feels responsible for. He says “this why I’m just about to block and forget I have a father” and I think what would that be like. Block an alive man who is dying like we all are, block an alive man “forget” about him until he is dead and then what? Then what? There is no peace in death. I’ve heard death unites and life separates but what if the very thing you want to unite with lays in that casket and you call him stranger though his name is father and you remember that summer when you were 10 and he took you the fair, paid for all rides you wanted, made jokes about smacking the annoying worker and you looked at him for the first time and thought Papi. And while this memory plays it cuts off during the good part and you remember how he slapped your brother in the car, how he wouldn’t cosign the loan you needed for college, how when you told him how you stopped playing the sport you only played for him because he never came to a game, he told you “so what, you can’t blame me for you being traumatized” and you think who even is this man? And so I imagine him dead, what I would say, how I would feel and it looks a little like this, just angrier.