Waking Wonders.

I....I don't understand intimacy with you

The difficulty of letting your face search my insides makes me hold my breath and

Sometimes these inhalations fail to whisper to this heart why this is ,what it is,

when it is

Frustrated I exhale cathartic wonders

none vying

So that I can place a finger on you and say now I understand---

She collects dolls and figurines

relics for heart which at 74  remind her of that spring day when her youngest

daughter stopped by and told her mother she would die

and when she did

to remember her chocolate skin

in the charcoal pigmented statue of a Nubian princess.

The porcelain figure is as fragile as lives

she's seen extinguished in the

blinking of an eye.

Her mother in the hospital bed,

machines flashing filling the clinical colored room with electronic signals

alerting everyone that

life .... is fading into something else.

My aunt wailed when her sister died.

Running down the street

Soul screaming She's dead, She's dead, oh my god

my God, my God, why have you fucked me

It is moments like these in which her mother learned not to make souvenirs of her

vision

Instead her consciousness is invaded with memories of what was

& what she hoped would be

Hope.

A little seed, the color of mustard.

nurtured in each plot of soil formed in her belly

The list of instructions

Love, Love, Love

She cultivated each soul to stand strong like a tree to

raise its hands to the

sky like leaves of branches


and with the spirit of our breath

to itterate blessings and thanks to an unknown being

which yearned for the forest laden earth to feel its paralyzing embrace

and clap its hands
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Yet fear became our lord,

first, when we believed we translated every syllable accurately,

second,when the culture of our hearts turned its back on grace

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I want to be intimate with you

I want to commune with the greatness that paints

humming pastel sunrises, and makes noise on a still

urban street,

I long for songs of hope

ricocheting in humanities scull

in the stead of ambulances, jackhammers, and businessman's shrapnel.

I want to leave death to death and life I want to inhabit

I want to live in this moment, in this place with you,

I want to always remember that we are wonders exhaled into being

You have purpose,

I have purpose

Let's make our grandmothers proud.

Before the throne of gods

Make her smile

Smile

I want you to smile

I want God to smile.

because smiling is that thing we do,

when the wheel is spinning and there's no way of stopping it

and we're just holding on

holding on really tight to each other

and when we stop spinning

Maybe those tiny seeds fostered in our mothers wombs

will burst forth from our hearts

and cultivate a garden of translucent truth

but right now we've got each other. 

So take your nails and dig them deep into the earth of my being

and hold on to me as I hold on to you.