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

This article appears in October 2020.

Kay Bell is the author of the poetry chapbook Cry Sweat Bleed Write. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications, including The Ekphrastic Review, The Write Launch, Pithead Chapel and Brown Molasses Sunday: An Anthology of Black Women Writers. She lives in the South Bronx.