For Darkie

My Grandmother, Dorcas Enid Henry, passed away on May 28, 2011. I cared for her until her death and in my confusion I made these notes.

It would seem as if the million I-love-yous and thanks are not enough to fill this absence in my gut

From where you lay, outlined in the glow of dusk

I must have seemed incorrigible with my whispering

My pleading

My tucking and folding

Patient as always

You were smiling

Everything else: blank

Tolerating me like you did when I was a child

Squeezing on the veins of your hand for comfort

My comfort

My Dar es Salaam

My bulwark

My Waterloo

I could never love you enough

And now I know that reminding you was only reminding me

I will never love anyone like that again

Saturday will come again

This time dragging reality chained to its swollen ankles

Limping toward me

Purposeful, menacing, bloated, grotesque

Grumbling, murmuring, disgusting Saturday

I am empty now, of this love,

Standing on Thursday’s buckling knees

I know the inside of this emptiness,

Having more to give but nowhere to give it

Having nowhere to put this special brand of devotion

All those years of anger and now?

Now I wish I had stayed longer where you were

That I could have the chance to relent, the gift of concession, the gift of thirty seconds more

Every time I said I was coming back is transformed into a mocking hydra I carry in my pocket

I can see your precious toothless smile

Effortlessly summoned from generations of practice

Altruistic stoicism

You suffered but never complained

And I knew, so I tried

(Darkie girl, I tried)

I wish now there was a report card

Can you tell me how I have done?

Are the scales balanced?

Did you leave me with my debt?

Did my fumbling tucking, my novice’s propping repay 29 years of strength and shield?

Or did I inherit everything I am?

Woman you have taught me pain

Then you made if go away.

And now you are…

Well, now you aren’t

I am…

Well, I was but not anymore

Now that you aren’t I am something else

Unspeakable, shameless, pleading with Life for a chance to do more

Even now

Long after

I want, still, to do

I want to give it back

Can you tell me how I’ve done?