Two Poems

  Vacation And on the third day we went to Grand Etang and I was still alive. Death digs its way into every vacation and in this homecoming I grow larger, fall weaker. Canada, my body, a frozen lake. This lake was poured into a volcano stuck between dying and dead and everyone has a different answer. And for a brief moment I can see what could be the entire history of me. My ancestors bussin ah wine on the mountain peak and swimming on the lakebed and grinding down with teeth like sugarcane splinters the last bricks of the old church. Other strands, more mundane are not allowed to come together and fade without cure. A black girl learns to worship herself very early. To not take invitations from strangers. To tend to her own burns and hide in the dark. After we return from Grand Etang I realize I want to have it all. I want to die and I want to do it without my body having to give in to the water. Maybe all the love I have for myself just comes down to saying I have had a good run. With throwing salt on all the ghosts, old and new hands dipped in milk trying to take a peek at your body as if it was a thing that never belonged to you. As if they could cut off the stem and pretend it was never a plant that called for sun and water and love beyond all interruptions       I feel betrayal in every plum blossom masking itself as cherry. Bark expanding bark not unlike the ridge where knuckle meets finger. There is infidelity in my yellow nails and in every word spit under my tongue. I can say I want to be alive but that feels like a betrayal too. It is not mandatory to want to tie myself down to the earth. Reunite with all my family resting on the ocean floor. I found forgiveness in the passing of time. In watching my nails grow. In telling my sisters that I love them and that I’ll see them tomorrow. I’ve started braiding ragweed into my hair trying to keep myself puffy and swollen and of the earth. Otherwise I begin to gamble the prospects of distant worlds of life elsewhere. I have anthologized my death woven it into a currency of existence. I wonder what part of my will will stay in the grave and what will scratch at your face at night. I am valuable because I am. In the lagoon smell and green blur into one. There are no hierarchies made of air luck or determination. I wait for the splitting moment for my body to expand enough to let the night in