Perfect
They tell me to write about what I know,
not about romance or travels to places I didn’t go.
Not about a drive-by shooting seventy miles from me
or about the unborn baby with diabetes.
No. Write something you know.
So I write about daughters without conscious parents,
trapped in responsibilities and abusive life lessons,
pulling out a knife and contemplating death
because when they saw reality they had nothing left.
Teenage girls pressured by men to do things they don’t want
to,
realizing that without dreams life can’t really be lived through,
getting married to be protected from the life that they
know,
but not getting what expected and living on death row,
instead cooking like they’re working on eternal commission
cleaning like a maid in the house that they live in;
when I write I write for my Momma.
I’m penning down words that don’t make sense
about living a life where I won’t regret
what I said to her when I said
I would live better.
Wouldn’t be brought down by the town where we live
and the lives that we lead
and the baggage we bring back to blacken our lives.
I see her crying at my bedside telling me things
a nine-year-old shouldn’t know about her parents.
Keeping it inside to hide the stress
that makes me feel like dying,
watching Mom and Dad struggle to keep words
from flying and keeping younger sisters
from seeing the fighting.
What child tells her momma to get a divorce
from the man who’s made her life so much worse;
who’s made her sweat when he walks into a room
not from delight but from lacking a broom.
She cleans and she cooks and takes care of the kids
while he sits back, flips on the TV, and says,
“I’m making the money; you do the rest.”
But unrest lies in my heart and my head
when I watch this scene from under my bed
and feel my heart reverberating inside like a gong
when I hear the screams and the shouts
from two people who got married to get along.
So the memories in my head, I’m sorry to say,
aren’t the kind that I’d like to tell,
but my emotions are running like the words from my mouth
and when I write, I say momma, be happy.
Momma, stay happy.
Live through the women you brought up on your own and take
pride
in knowing that the lovely, respected, independent women
we are now look up to you and the things you do
to make our lives better.
You go with the flow and taught us
to go against it, to be who we are
and not to be ashamed of it.
When I look back past the hurt
and the purple bruises from your fights,
I see you holding my hand and I know
it’s no mistake that when I write about my life,
I write about you.
And there are things I want to portray,
so many prayers that I want to pray,
but I only have enough time now to say,
that though there are things in my past I would change,
I would never change the woman who raised me.
And even if he tells you that you’re not good enough,
that you can’t do anything right,
take it from the woman who’s got 20-20 sight:
I love you because of who you are,
and who you are made me who I am.
Therefore, you are perfect.
