iridescent & indecent, the mississippi river reaches towards me like a lonely woman, first, she asks me what my mother never has for my name. I tell her, the levee could not contain me either, the body, the water, the inside, the outside—
all of it was too much, briefly, the blood thirst mosquitoes spare me or I’m too busy wondering if I’m a woman who knows unrequited love or if the woman who says she loves me, does so, insofar, that she has recently, momentarily, suddenly, historically loved me hard but not well
my mouth slips, I say mississippi but mean the Atlantic the difference between a river and an ocean, the first is a body that empties itself and the other is what gets filled, this means what does not hold here, will hold, somewhere else
i keep thinking about the Atlantic
because i keep thinking about her/ theoretical woman of my mother’s nightmares/ the woman who, if my mother knew I knew my lover’s lips are soft, taste like cherry chapstick, would bring shame to her family/ the woman who wants to love me, but got grief thick as a morning fog/ the woman i’m young and stupid enough to give another chance,
what the ship could not hold, a woman held, the river slashes against the bedrock i stand on, blue gray skies become velvet blue hen black the tide becomes stronger– the calling, louder, the pulling, tighter, the moaning — reader, what makes a woman want like this? my mother’s red nails speak when asked how to be done
make us red like sex. pristine, bone-clean, coffin shaped. girl yes, gel, 10 karat drip. make ussharp like the snaps double dutch make when it sink into the ankle. we must be difficult to holdbut harder to break.
the woman who wears us got 3 babies so she gon need something that won’t cut her children butsharp enough to let a nigga know. she not an easy going woman cause she ain’t have an easygoing life. she the type of woman to spare the rod and spoil the child, o soften us at the edge. justcause you become a mother, don’t mean your trauma’s go away. it latches onto your dna, unzipsthe coil, rearranges the AGTC, until you can’t decipher who you are vs. what was done to you.then you end up with babies who got traumatic memory from lives they never lived. imaginethat, a bunch of black girls already born dying. already born with something that’s been takenaway from them. that’s why black mommas be quick and decisive with the switch. make ussweet but make sure these niggas know not to fuck with us. don’t nobody want smoke from awoman that prays with the same hands she draw blood with. any momma that’d risk a chip nailto kill somebody is a woman you don’t want to fuck with.
sometimes, we only want to be used for sweetness. who wouldn’t want to bear witness to a housethat jill scott ripples through? she asks, is it the way you love me? and we outline a glass ofcabernet. but we’d rather be the guillotine than the body hooked between its teeth.
you understand what we asking for? make us so red that if we need to kill a motherfucker that touches us or any of our kin, they blood gon look like a second coat.
Photo by Jana Sabeth on Unsplash