She pointed directly on the map

To where we were 

Always an uptight woman 

I remember her telling us about how she vacuumed the hair out of her bathtub and made it sound 

To us, age seven 

Like the normal womanly ritual

If you were to be a good wife and all 

Little does she know now I don't even clean my house 

I pay someone else 

Things were said about how well dressed she was--sturdy and careful and always

Always always modest 

The bees were trapped in her dark forest of hair

And she pointed directly at the map

To where we were 

And said 

We were the Mother of all of them 

I remember sitting a little taller then 

Importantly stroking my jean skirt or fingering the red silk sash that held all of my accomplishments 

I remember how important we were 

__the cult that raised me 

The panic 

Like a surigne 

Gets in the veins 

One thing can stumble unevenly foreward and suddenly 

Everyone has died 

There is cancer of the muscle 

And I am lost 

_anxiety

When we get this right 

It feels as though 100 people have fed me 

|| content

Do not let all your edges spill over like a continent 

It will not make us better only worse 

_note to self

Sometimes when I frustrate you

I see you

You cant help yourself but come up and out from your conch shell

You 

Always trying to paint it so you look so stiff and pretty and stuck together in all the right places 

I see your curved spine 

The pinch in your voice when you say that God is good 

You are right 

He is good 

But I don't know who it is telling me so

There was a storm of flowers that came from my birth 

I was a bulb

And if my garden only takes up this tiny part of the world 

I will grow the flowers to smell sweet

To speak loud in color 

To sing 

arms raised in the wind 

to praise Him 

You

soft like a pear

Be not surprised when the scars come easily and when waiting is hard 

When people try to take a bite from you

And you weep

I like the way it hurts you

And yet does not change you into

hard 

Fruitless 

Weightless 

__Let things weigh on you if they do

You are a Forrest with a path 

And though you bubble up in me 

Large blocks of wood not yet carved 

The kind that hurt coming out 

Also from you I have found 

Among my lungs, my stomach

small 

Delicate

waterfalls that you've always known were there 

__my man

Sometimes that knife is so deep 

You need six pairs of hands 

To get it out 

Do not be afraid of family 

Be more afraid of dying 

_community

People can put a fire in your bones 

And can make living life