Collages

born

Wind wafts through the window and onto my son's bare skin. He has kicked the covers off, and I breathe in his sillhouette in the light from the streetlight on the other side of the wall. His chest rises and falls steadily for awhile and then catches and I see that he is crying.

I have been singing him a song. "This is the first song that I ever sang to you," I whisper, and he nods.

And then, "When you were born, you were tiny and perfect," I start, and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and onto the pillow that we are sharing. "You were clean and bright. You looked at me right away."

I know in this moment that he remembers, even if he doesn't know it yet. He was there, present like we all were the moment that we saw light, all on our own individual days. Some of us were born under moonlight, some in the sunshine or in almost complete darkness. Some of us were born under fleurescent lights.

But we were all born. And all of us carry those memories, and maybe if our own mammas were in bed telling us the stories of our own perfect fingers and toes we would weep as well. Knowing that we are never loved more than we were at that moment.

The moment before we were afraid to be loved.

There is so much love, here in this place.

neighbors on Mcgregor

There are children everywhere, but the ones I pay the most attention to live in a house behind mine. They appear like ghosts over the fence, shouting words that I struggle to understand. Their eyes are small black pebbles, shining like fire in the sunshine.

My daughter hears their voices and runs outside but by that time they are gone... vanishing like raindrops disappear into the earth.

Nothing until nighttime, when I sit out on the back stoop, reading a book; my fingers cold enough that I can barely turn the pages. On nights like this I hear doors slamming and their mother yelling and I try not to listen.

Oftentimes in the morning a White man visits and pushes the children on a tire swing in their backyard. They laugh and then the White man vanishes as quickly as everything else does.

Then, again the children wander like ghosts and I turn my head toward them, sometimes walking to the fence to peek over it, witnessing their little world. This muddy playground strewn, like mine, with pieces of plywood and broken toys.

This is it, I speak to them. But not all of it. Not forever.

A Baby Named Bear

Two weeks ago a baby was born into my hands, and a mamma was born in her husband's eyes and I was born again, like I am born every day.

Except this was a special day and in this baby's dark dark eyes I saw my own reflection. And in the dark dark water I saw my own reflection. And I was speaking and hearing my words.

"I love you," my eyes were saying when they looked into his, and in speaking these words to him, I opened my mouth to myself. And in my mind I named him, so I kissed him and gave him to his daddy while his mamma came back into her body.

I want to open my heart so that he can see inside.

God,
Keep a space for this child

stoop thoughts

Thinking about men who scour my yard for cigarette butts. I walk outside sometimes and these men are there. They look at me self consciously and I want to talk to them. They quickly stash the butts in their pockets and pick up whatever they are carrying and walk away, disappearing into the night.

"Wait."

I speak to them in my mind, and my head feels like it is going to explode. I talk to them like I am praying, like I am writing a letter.

Father, Brother, Lover, Warrior... whoever You are,

I sit here humbly, in front of a house that I do not own. My front stoop is covered by a carpet that is almost worn through, stapled to wood. The windows in this house do not open and sometimes I feel like I am in a prison. Carpets are filled with coffee stains and there is almost no light. At night time I sit out here to remind myself that life still keeps moving.

I watch you because you are a reflection of me, and I am not afraid of you. I wonder if you have ever known love, and want to tell you that I have not ever known real love. Most of the love in my life has been painful and now I sit here with butts on my lawn, wondering if it was worth it. If it is still worth it.

Take whatever you want. Sometimes I can't feed my cats or myself and I want to go far away from here, somewhere where I don't have to fill anyone's belly or heart with something that I don't have. Here, on this same stoop, I look at flyers and feel like I exist in a separate universe from these things. I live in search of feeling, experiencing, because I don't know what else there is. Everything else seems out of reach.

I wander sometimes too, but never far from here because something always feels unfinished. I wander and trip over toys and books and chairs, and my world is like a maze...an obstacle course. I almost never find my way; instead I sit down wherever I am and search my mind for what to feel. Sometimes I cry, but sometimes I can't, so I think about the eyes of a little boy whom I have never met, and tears run down my face. Sometimes I clear a space on the carpet and look at the ceiling.

I want to tell you that I am a woman who hangs by a thread sometimes. That I am disconnected, lost.

I want to invite you in, show you who I am, that I am nothing more than you are. My pockets are full of butts and flowers from other people's yards, and I love you.