Portrait at Forty-Seven

For Kamilah Aisha Moon

“It is said that grief is actually love—but with nowhere to go.” ~Ocean Vuong

My body grows softer

and softer

as soft as the earth

Midline, I’m at the partition of my life

junior elder, the halfway mark

between being and not

Forty-seven, and I have my mother’s ageless skin

I confuse everyone, including myself

People say: I thought you were 37, 27

I want to say: I looked nothing

like this when I was 37, 27

and I feel hundreds of years old

Forty-seven, and I know these legs

are not promised to me

I know these eyes

will not always see clear

I know those I love will walk

down the road and disappear

Forty-seven, and I thought

we would be old women together

stiff but sturdy, like broken trees

flashes of heat like lightning

inside of you, inside of me

Instead, our bodies grow softer

and softer, as soft as the earth

midline, we are at the partition

the halfway mark

between being and not

Joseph

Joseph’s mattress is in the center of our living room

bare and naked and taking up a lot of space

X wanted to get rid of it

Y said, I’m not even sad he’s dead

and I crossed myself

when I walked by his house the other day

There, Joseph, if I write a poem for you

will you stop standing over my shoulder

your hands in your pockets

ready to say, whatever comes into your head?

You’d say, “You’re smiling now

because you’re uncomfortable.”

or “Your sneakers make you look

like you’re homeless.”

And as wrong and rude as those things were

at the upstate parties we were always at

they always brought me closer to you

because I knew what you were

and you knew what I was

Yeah, we were hanging out in the country

with all these upstate folks

but we said mean city kid things to each other

and they would make each of us smirk

We called each other out

because we knew

that in the corner of our hearts

there were basements and alleys

and childhood horrors

none of those upstate folks

could even imagine

When we’d hang out in Brooklyn,

you’d point out every street corner

where a friend had gotten shot

you always said, “I’m the only one

still alive from all my friends

who lived here, who lived on my block.”

And now Joseph, you’re not alive either

I can say that to you. I can be the only one

at this whole party who will be openly rude

who will look you in the face and tell you the truth:

Joseph, you’re not alive anymore

you don’t have to keep hanging around

Uncle S

Uncle S was shot by 12 officers, a rain of bullets, a blizzard of bullets, a hail of them, knocked him down, killing him in front of his home, the apartment above the masjid. The adults talked about it in helpless, horrified tones, shaking their heads. It didn’t appear in the news, just over the phones, in conversations among Uncles and Aunties, in collections taken up for his young pregnant wife, in discussions of his innocence, in sermons of how only Allah knows everything.

I’d been 15, and Uncle S had been in the middle of building a bathroom in our hallway. Our house had been cut and cut and cut until our family only had the one bathroom for the eight of us: three teenagers, two children, one baby, two exhausted parents, not to mention all the overnight guests. Everyone was sorely strained, the bathroom especially. Most of the time, we’d be banging on the door, legs twisted in pretzels, crying out of shame we’d wet ourselves again.

For years after Uncle S was murdered, I showered in the unfinished bathroom. The hot water rained down on me, the half-finished tiles, the unfinished wood of the walls had been just left, open like a coffin, the smell of mold, the smell of death.

Thirty years later, my father is downstairs. There are so many bathrooms in my baby sister’s house, I get lost when looking for them. My father and I don’t speak. So many unsaid words between us. I want to ask: Do you remember Uncle S? Do you remember the day the police shot him down in front of his home, his young pregnant wife upstairs? I don’t have to ask, I know he remembers, he was there, he was there, he was there.