Poetry

  As September comes- I remember you telling me, How Jesus Christ is the King, and those who know Him will never die. I was sitting on your knee, maybe I was six or seven- we were sitting in the kitchen looking out the glass doors into our backyard In Spotswood. I couldn’t stop my questions, running out of my mouth in rivers as curious children can be. I asked: “Will He forgive people who are evil, those who will wait until the last possible second of life for forgiveness?” You answered: “Only God knows a heart, so only He will know if a person  really asks for forgiveness, and means it.” I remember you- a silhouette in the sun  wearing a straw hat, God knows where you got it- to protect your head and light skin while vacuuming the pool, or re-filling the chlorine. I remember smelling the chlorine, and knowing you were out there making our pool ready for a family swim. I knew, as I ran to my bedroom window looking out to the side of our house. That’s where I  dreamed...

I watch my reflection as if it belongs to a stranger. Brown eyes—indigenous, Puerto Rican—dance with a youth that belies my fifty-four years. Almond-shaped, perfectly spaced, serious lips part in awe of the image. A soul created to be held in a vessel much too young for its nine-month journey. There is the nose, reshaped by a surgeon’s steel at sixteen, nostrils tapered straight to spite the Malibu Barbie dream. I’ll say no more of the "after"— and you don't want to know the "before." There are the ears that lean outward, still ringing with the ghost of Guns N’ Roses. I possess a deadpan demeanor, a blend of salt and satire. “Why are you laughing? I’m not trying to be funny.” But the wit is old; it followed me out of the birth canal. My stories were wrapped with me in the amniotic sac. When they ask where the gift comes from, I tell them it was the Keebler Elves. I look at this imperfect person with a new compassion, owning this skin more than the girl ever cou...

I hear you as you speak. You hold my hand, masking the heat of a frustration you think I cannot feel. You offer up the world in fragments— weather, news, the trivial noise— while I drift within the hull of this inner sea. I breathe. I beat. I am a clock ticking in a room you cannot enter. You wonder if I am climbing peaks or skimming wakes on a distant shore, but you are pacing the perimeter of a mind you cannot map. My nostrils flare— your monologue halts. A fraction of a second where hope catches light, before you dismiss it as a fluke, a glitch in the machinery of my stillness. You go on, comforted by your own voice, tilting your head for a sign, a spark, a sudden waking. I cannot see the tears pooling on the shelf of your lashes, but I know the weight of your helplessness. I know the sudden, desperate crush of your grip. You plead for me to read your thoughts, unaware that I am already there, listening to the silence behind your words. You think I am trapped in a cage of pain. You ...

I step into the shadow’s throat, but see the coming gleam, The terrors of my former life dissolve into a dream. The dark is just a breath delayed, now pierced by sudden fire, In pulses of a deeper hope that lift my spirit higher. I crawled through rot and heavy dust to reach this holy place, But now I walk upright and free, clothed in saving grace. No words can paint the threshold where the soul is broken down, To be rebuilt in majesty beneath a sacred crown. I look upon my changing hand, no longer made of clay, As higher trust now guides me home and wipes the past away. The phantom night begins to fade as flashes fill the air, I do not grope or lose my way, for I am guided there. The unknown has no teeth to bite, and faith is realized, Within this changing corridor, the spirit is baptized. A mortal lifetime spent in tears led to these final paces, Leaving behind the heavy flesh for wide and luminous spaces. The light reaches to hold me close, just as a mother would, And turns me into ...

The chair lies askew, a silent casualty. It looks kicked from beneath, yet remains unbroken— as if felled by an invisible tide of malice, or perhaps just the weight of choices left unsaid. (For silence, too, is a choice made.) Now the floor is its safety net—the level where beggars kneel. Down where the desperate crave a single cold drop of water after the folly of ruin. Others have already branded this failure in scarlet, inking the wood with paint that will never wash clean. I study its desperation in the angle of the sprawl. It clings to the linoleum, terrified of being righted, lest it be stood upon once more. The floor has become its Egypt—a known bondage preferred over the gamble of freedom. Safe. Stagnant. It remains a still-life of posterity, a warning to the rest: Do not bother. It neither reaches out nor asks for a hand. Like a possum playing dead, it survives on the barest minimum of breath, performing a life it no longer leads. I pity it—this shadow of a chalk tracing. Lef...