Mother, I keep praying the parts of you
out of me & yet you keep returning,
always wearing a secondhand dress
always fraught and wayward
always sunbathing in grief;
refusing to love any one island or man.
& you know how hard I’ve tried to not disappoint you
but how I’ve innately become a wound on the flesh salted,
& how you have carried me like a knife on the tongue twisting
& how each time I tried to say goodbye it was your maternal glory
that choked me
& then you couldn’t bear to love the one who reminded you of yourself,
& each time you tried you were forced to recite prayers of your own:
Dear Lord, you have buried a gun in my womb please don’t shoot
