Auntie Early lives in my dreams . . . comes dressed in the image of human . . . dancing through . . . a party of cousins . . . cousins smile . . .  looking straight through her . . . looks of love . . . love she makes, light energy . . . Early only ever wanted to be transparent, maybe . . . granddaddy wouldn’t allow it . . . too bad . . . she is spirit now . . . maybe it’s better for her . . . she is not dying to be heard anymore. . . or . . . how would we know . . . her fresh cleaned floors . . . that kissed the feet bare . . . her florida-water-baths put spring in wet air . . . perfuming her pain with another baptism . . .

 

Up in age she spoke boldly . . . what letters begin to spell the truth . . . it is an alphabet of suffering . . . a book of family recipes to be burned . . . or buried . . . save the good parts . . . save the okra, kale and mustard greens . . . burn the salt pork, fat back, of our poverty . . . blend the misogyny and  self-contempt with factory farm eggs to make a muck . . . glop it into the boots of our deceased . . . they never had any straps . . . lace them up . . . leave them there to rot . . . perhaps plant a tree in their name . . .

 

sometimes I try to see . . . the colors that flashed . . . on the back of her eyelids . . . when her brain caught lightening . . . perhaps it was a tornado that swept her up . . . knocked her down . . . can we be electrocuted by our own imaginations . . . I ask myself . . . as if I could know . . . did her daddy hit her . . . like my daddy hit me . . . what are we going to do with our men . . . the throw-aways from society . . . come home to trash what little we have . . . may be they dying to be heard too . . . what version of empathy works right here . . . it’s both a hard place . . . and a soft spot . . . dads become grandads become uncles . . . she is spirit now . . . it’s up to me . . .  to figure it out.