A Second Too Long
My sad comes easy and matches my everything
My sad is a costume made to fit perfectly
My sad feels like my mother's hand-me-downs
Like her wrinkling skin still holding itself together
Under each crease I save whatever dust of joy I own
I stand to my feet and my joy hangs in the air for a minute
Before it settles down to the floor I am out on a date
Not willing to waste a good feeling sleeping inside loneliness
Willing to give myself a chance at happiness
Apparently love can do that- hold happiness
I’m wearing my mother's best dress short and 60s like
My date is a mixture of OK and danger-a man
I swirl my wine the other way to say I am bored
But his gaze meets the short of my dress
His eyes say ‘You owe me’
Say, ‘This glass of wine does not come free’
My sadness finds a place to hide
I tip my glass and our table wears a shade too red to not say blood
I climb out of my fear and walk away unwilling to be the body
From which blood will later spill off like this expensive wine
Later in the night
When I would have stayed a second too long
What The Fire Made Us
I was still alive when the first wave
cracked through our floors
He was throwing one of his tantrums
A heavy mass of fury and fear over us
But this one landed on our one room house
He was a magician that way
Always filling the house with smoke
And then our mother the morning after
New make-up (down) on her face
We named nights like these the devil's time
His anger flared like flames
Smoke bellowed thick and dark
Sipped into the intricate parts of us
But that night I died and woke up
a woman older than my body
I traded in my childhood naivety for defiance
For a reflex war-ready and ever on guard
Today we are daughters of heavy things learning to embrace peace
Carriers of burning bushes with no voice from God
Away, alone and unlearning anger
Melancholy
A day after the weekend is over
Always feels like the day after burial
Everything tastes somber and lonesome
Like the deceased's estate is being divided
Or fought over by less self-respecting strangers
I do not know who or what died
But I have inherited a sickness in my mind
A state of constant leaving but never arriving
Hold leaving against the light long enough
See how it too is dying?
The sickness is melancholy in a black dress
Hold death against the light
See how it too is a black song?
It is Monday every other day in my blood
I am undressing layers of sadness
Hoping the next one will be a shade brighter
An attempt a joy