If you can make a myth out of any fear, you have
already won.
The serpent
skinnying its way through earth is the imitation
of a root, an atavism to be uprooted.
Inside my mother, there's an epistemology
of pointing. Inside of me,
I fit two lives inside my life.
I've stood twice
at a casket stunned at how their caked faces were failed
imitations of themselves.
Each time I froze and waited for a sign
to tell me death was made
thinner
by my looking. A wisteria-colored bruise
on my temple was a church-
shaped blues. The crescent-shaped scar
on my mother's cheek made her weak
in public.
Perfect rhymes don't exist in nature.
Yewa mastered death
while my mother mastered looking away.
When I became a poet, I cut God with a horizon.
Though all rhymes are hidden, you are
in alignment.
You are a line.
I was once
an enlightened thing,
who took in every emotion I was given.
Now taking is a task and I have so much to take
from.
Driving past the cemetery, I point
and tell her
that's where Linda is.
Don't point at the graves, she says.
All it takes
is a little bit of fear for one to shapeshift.
And when I think of death, I turn into myself.
