Content warning: violence

1.

south carolina

every night after work in
the white community,
mother sits in the sparse kitchen holding a
handkerchief because the seagulls always come
to visit her face,

her hands are calloused from
years of washing linen & changing
diapers,
i mostly see her staring into vacant
spaces thinking of brother doing time
in prison after he was caught lifting at the whites owned shops down the block,
of father somewhere in the distant city
buried between the laps of a new mistress with new
promises of invincible things,

with her, i have come to know
that what we call love is sometimes
a misplaced notion, a beatified delusion, a wishful thinking
on our part because I have seen her
nursed her wounds, christened them after father’s name, hoping they become flowers growing from tender scars…

2.

RUPTURED

brown skin girl,
your body is a relic…