Bookends

Pick yourself up,

but I can't

get up.

I can't see clearly

while hunched over in pain.

My stomach is fighting some demon.

And my mind is having colorful dreams.

Of entering my mother's house

and holding her new-born baby,

white-dress-in-white-bonnet
just home from church

and so happy to see me.

I am fasting

but only because it hurts to eat.

I have been shitting rivers of

membrane and blood

every-other-hour.

Thinking

Maybe I am getting it out of my system,

maybe I am purging my past,

maybe I am letting go,

maybe I have food poisoning.

I don't want to go back to that place,

with the constant hum of the television,

children screaming and every

time I try to explain something

there seems to

(literally)

be a language barrier.

That.

And my grandmother

died yesterday.

peacefully.

How she devoted so much time

to loving her family

and her community.

How I am so deeply saddened

by her departure.

So much so that her pictures make me cry.

And every time I think a story of her,

I laugh, and then cry again.

I say,

"It's ok, you're ok."

Until the pain goes away,

and I try to get up once again.