For MaMa

Afraid of your demise

Heart on a high speed pursuit

Tractor trailer that won’t tip over

10 commandments in the iris of your smile

She makes me want to be a saint

It hurts to sin

Words like whiplashes

Broke you down like a fried bible

Watched you burn into the shape of a coffin

I would cut my heart out for her

Place it in the split of a cocoon

I am no where close to perfection

And this poem will never truly be the scripture of my love to you written on the inside of my blood vessels

It hurts to even write these words

I want to break the tip of my nails

Draw your name in with my blood

I’m an Egyptian slave trying to leave love stories for the next woman who will bare pain

I want her to understand that there is always beauty in pain

Like how the tips of your fingers are consolations

Guide me MaMa

Teach me how to forgive like how the lord teaches you that my heart is a broken cradle rocking

Repair me

Forgive me once more

She still loves me and I hate her for it

I am the devil to her god

Pounced fist against the legends of her maps

Took advantage of an old woman

Too selfish to realize she was only reaching out to mend my broken existence

That’s what grandmothers do

Love you when devil has taken your soul

Resurrect you like Christ

She is a godly woman

So I know no matter how much it hurts her to love me she always will

I’m a bad child

Undeserving of her love

Anticipate a Sunday visit

Boiled bananas and dumpling w/ cabbage and salt fish

Afraid my tears will remain the reflection of indulgence

Diabetic heart beating like a sugar cane

I want to be her insulin

Moomie says that if I cry in front of her she’ll become stressed out

I’m still trying to part the sea

It’s like the choice between eating a fruit you have no precedence of and dying of hunger

I want to cry

Reveal that my actions are pure

I don’t love her because the melany in my skin shines like her soul

But because my heart yearns for her forgiveness like a lover lost on the Atlantic coast

His other half was always right

He can’t live without her

Like I can’t live w/o my grandmother

I’m on the verge of breaking my heart in two

I want you to know just how much I love you

3minute conversations on Sundays don’t take away all the shit I’ve put you through

And if the doors of heaven are the closet I can get to you

I’ll sell my soul to the lord

Prove to those non believers that saints exist

MaMa you are perfect

I hate old ladies

They remind me of my Grandmother

The way their knees rattle like a tambourine during 7:30 mass

Backs arched over as if they are carrying my offense on their spine

They are ready to detain me

But they understand the weakness in my heart

My grandmother is ancient

Knows nothing of poetry except the fact that I write

Doesn’t understand metaphors or similes

So it hurts me to know that she may never understand this poem

My feelings may never have any validation

Makes me want to stop writing

These words have always told stories for me

And now my heart beat wants to tell the story

The way it shifts paces as if trying to remind me that she feels the same

My grandmother has a heart problem

I’m terrified she will die w/o ever feeling my love for her

I would feel better if she caught alsimers

Capture my spirit when she hugs me

Loves me with her heart

Not her memory

I’m still selfish

Trying to fill up my own guilt

I want to teach her my name all over again

Show her how to love me like I’m still that little Jamaican girl they call Jackie

Love me like I’m her grandchild

Pull the wool off her eyes

So she can see the 10 commandments in the iris of my smile

Ive posted this before-For you Emilio :)