Also by Upile Chisala
soft magic
nectar
For Sakhe.
Your love is the kindest of creatures.
CONTENTS
Wound
Hunger
Swoon
Sister
A Note on the Illustrations
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Wound
-
And if you let it,
fear will gladly tell your story.
As Black as Tax
Here,
We were never once children.
Here, our mothers, like Mary, birthed saviors.
Our only purpose is to redeem.
Month-end is for working miracles, little black Jesuses.
“Let there be light and water, rent and bread.”
Caring Pains
Here,
To be woman is to care hard,
Care until it kills you.
Inheritance #1
I can’t decide whether it was borrowed or a thing of the blood.
Wherever I got it from then,
I am choosing not to claim it now.
Gogo
I guess your heart needed the rest after a whole life of holding everyone in it.
Swim Class
You cannot dive into their
mouths and fish out a “sorry”;
it’s never worked that way.
And what good is a “sorry” you had to drown for?
You Are Not a Mender of Men
I want to break the messiah in you.
Not everyone is yours to save.
Inheritance #2
Listen,
Someone has to listen to the “Go”
And the “Run”
And the “Don’t look back”
And have the stomach to leave like your father,
Even if just this once.
You can be that someone, the someone who makes joy on new ground.
Sometimes
I walk in, hurt from the day.
How much tired is in black living?
I want light bones and lots of money.
I want it easier.
I want it white with little sorry.
Equal Parts Nothing and Everything
You hurt best,
And I wish you’d stay gone the longest.
It’s not the blood or the bone or the good years;
I think I just love you cause I can.
Cause it comes easier than hating you
And hurts less.
“When Will You Go Back?”
What if
“Back” is a story you want to spit out?
“Back” is your grandmother’s body in the ground?
“Back” is a heavy heart?
“Back” is always a hungry pocket?
“Back” is where your dreams give up on you?
Familiar
Something as brutal as you,
As fist-like and unaware,
With a cruel history, in the bone
And in the mouth,
With little prospect of peace,
Always on the wrong side,
Something as brutal as you walks in, and I embrace it.
I embrace it knowingly.
It Ended as Sourly as It Did Because
We were two bruised things
Behaving poorly.
Always going wound for wound
And troubled father for troubled father.
Dredging up dirt and trauma.
Nothing was sacred, everything was a weapon,
No one was safe.
This is the damage dance.
Fire still can’t be put out with gasoline.
Love and violence have never been friends.
-
Right in the meat of our love I knew it,
I knew it like my palm,
This would be a story filled with bones.
In some homes,
Like ours,
Both the betrayal and the forgiveness
Were ruthless and constant
And undeserved.
Waiting Bodies. Weighty Bodies.
Every time I mean to write about my body, I laugh.
How can someone be so un-in-love with this luscious, overflowing
Concoction of thigh
And dark, desirable things?
How can that someone be me?
How dare I!
How I look in the mirror and grieve!
How do I wake up in hate?
And will I ever get tired of trying to make small
of my heavy,
To make light of my darkness,
To see beauty where I see ugly?
Someone said they would die for a body like this.
Well, someone is dying to leave this body,
No, someone is dying to love this body again.
A Father Is a Something
Dad,
I won’t carry your fate forward.
I’ll show up in celebration of everyone who celebrates me.
I will be the one promise you will never break.
Abbreviation
We learned it when we were younger,
There are things you mustn’t ask.
There are uncles who go thin,
And stop laughing,
And disappear.
And there are aunts who are left behind to take
the pills,
And stay alive,
And pay the rent,
And never speak ill.
We learned it when we were younger,
Some things hurt and hurt again.
-
1.You didn’t break God’s heart.
2.We can’t always spot the wolves.
3.Even people you love can be beasts.
4.Even beds can be hell.
5.Even our bodies can feel like foreign countries.
Countries we never wanted to visit. Countries
that are on fire. Countries we want to run from.
Countries that will never love us back.
6.You didn’t break God’s heart.
7.Don’t blame yourself for their bite.
8.You didn’t know you were walking into a mouth.
9.Even people you love can be beasts.
The Thing About Souls
You are gone in so many ways,
But here in new ones.
You have us by the heart;
We’ll always be yours, and you’ll always be ours.
Part Prayer, Part Plea
Is being someone’s daughter sure punishment?
Will I spend my whole life begging for permission to breathe?
A Mercy
I want to be as careful with my words as I can. Because I am the kind to run into my mouth and say things less lovely than I meant them. Regret it, regret it in the belly. Here is my offering, ugly and sharp but true.
It always felt good, but it never felt right. And endings can be remarkable things if we let them.
What Was Lost
Losing will always feel fresh
And under-grieved.
You were the sister I chose.
And I was your willing disciple.
Somewhere,
A nightclub remembers us dancing.
There, our friendship
Is still breathing.
A Few Things You May Reconsid
er
1.That knife of a mouth.
2.A liking for the bottle, if it comes with a disliking for yourself.
3.Hiding hot anger under thick laughter.
4.Talking yourself out of joy more times than into it.
Sold Out
“Trust me, you’ll regret it,” they say.
Trust me,
if my father had even one “sorry” to offer,
I’d buy out the front row and listen.
-
Home for you was always hard.
Someone was always raising their voice,
The other was always wanting out.
So much running under one roof.
So much longing in a single space.
Addendum
All we learned,
we the children they supposedly stayed for,
was that misery was home and right and ours.
Softness Is a Gift in Worlds and Homes
Your mother has kind eyes,
Is sorry she said those things you know she’ll say again tomorrow,
Wishes you weren’t so set on being so soft and breakable,
Wants you to take her abuse with a smile.
Small Violences and Other Lies
Because you say it with the sweetest parts of you,
In the sweetest voice,
Out of the sweetest mouth,
I am honeyed by it.
And fall into it.
And crawl under it.
Suddenly, I am the sorry one
And you are the savior.
And all your cruel things are gone and forgotten.
This is a violence.
You tell me I live in a panic
That my favorite houses are the ones that shake.
That I wouldn’t know love if it called me by
my name.
This is how you like to cut me down and call me twisted.
This is how you forget you are the danger.
This a violence too.
The art of turning someone against themselves.
The art of making someone small.
The art of tearing a pride limb from limb.
The art of having the last word, the word that matters, the word that holds water.
This is a violence,
and in love there is no small violence
and no rug to
sweep it under.
-
I haven’t quite figured out what the loneliness is meant to teach me, especially when it crawls into rooms I’ve filled with people.
Borders
These lines drawn crooked
draw blood so neatly.
-
I miss you in a very real way
But I’m far too proud
And tired
And angry
To rebuild that bridge.
Martyr/Mother/Magician
Your mother,
like mine,
lives in between mourning and rejoicing.
Took whatever joy offered, however little,
and promised to make love out of it.
But you,
and I,
and even she
can learn the way out of any love that requires
our smallness.
-
You can give and give and come out the other end tired and longing.
-
You should know,
burning is not the only way to come to poetry.
You don’t have to pry open a wound to have a story worth telling.
-
I have been grieving a lot of things that needed to die in me.
Hunger
Please Note
The very first step is believing you deserve joy.
All That Grew
There is a long list of things I wish this life had or hadn’t given me,
But now that I am here, having lived with and without,
I know life was only preparing me for myself
and I was worth the wait.
Gently
Darling,
There’s so much life in this place,
everything is begging you to breathe.
-
1.Are you ungrateful for wanting your forgiveness to look nothing like your mother’s?
No
2.You were taught that men are gods
That God is a man
That God is your father
That your father is God.
3.In your story, “home” and “wound” are synonymous Just like “mother” and “worshipper.”
4.And what kind of love grows from a wound?
5.Are you ungrateful if you celebrate the day
you left home,
I mean wound, I mean mother,
worshipper, father, and God?
No
6.Growing up where you did and how you did
You know good and well
That staying is only half of the story.
It may kick you in the pride every time.
But the work of keeping a love warm and
living is always worth it.
There Isn’t a Fire Around Like You
Because you have it
—Time—
and having it is a blessing,
spend some of it
learning how not to be afraid of yourself.
-
Saying it isn’t far from living it
Of course, only
if you believe in that kind of thing
Your mouth or your magic
Your magic or your mouth.
Grace
You’ve got to make right with your story.
None of this half living and hot anger.
None of this leaving yourself and falling into people.
None of this staying cause their warmth comes with little work.
None of this settling for smallness.
You’ve got to make right with your story,
So you can be a home to yourself.
Because no one can give you as good a life
as you can.
It Will Serve You Most
While you’re at it,
Learn accountability.
Learn it well.
Even with kind intentions, you too could be the beast in a story.
-
Your witchery is knowing you’re yours,
when all your training has taught you to be someone else’s.
-
If it is all burning and misery ahead,
I hope the version of myself that is tired of rising from the ashes in the end
Shows up and keeps me from dancing into the fire to begin with.
-
You were taught to work miracles for everyone
but yourself.
A messiah to others but barely a friend of your own.
These, darling, are things you must undo before you become undone.
-
A list of things you’ve braved lately:
Bills that linger.
Silence that cuts.
Mothers who lug around pain.
Gods who don’t show up.
The dead who aren’t getting any rest.
Brothers who sink into their father’s habits.
Fathers who aren’t sorry.
Lovers who make doors out of your tiniest flaws and walk out with parts of you.
But, darling, remember healing never forgets to come to soften the day.
These are things you will survive.
-
It will go how it will go;
Either way, I will arm myself with
gladness.
Ready
Now that you’ve chosen peace, prepare for it.
Make yourself a home for the healing.
Half of the work is readying your heart.
So when joy walks in, you know it’s yours
and that you deserve it.
-
Darling,
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning.
There is no shame in a fresh beginning, only grace and gratitude.
Find a Quiet Place to Practice
Some people don’t sit with themselves long enough to learn to love from the inside out.
-
I hope the thrill of leaving yourself wears off
Soon and completely.
Because when it comes to it, when it comes
Right down to it, you’re the one you need.
Once the Water Goes
This life will push you, my darling.
So you’ll have to learn
First to cry for crying’s sake.
And then get up and push it back.
-
You are working on having the backbone for this life;
every joy you conjure is a blessing,
every part of you that wants another day is golden.
You are worth the care and celebration.
Some Truths Are Just as Persistent Tomorrow
The wine is as makeshift a solution as the lover.
If you want a story that doesn’t reek of regret,
you’ll have to crawl out of your old ways and learn to be honest.
-
Darling,