1. I wear my grandmother’s bones like a housedress through the city. Some nights the block tells me all its problems. I’ll meet you at the top of the biggest rock in Rolesville or on train headed to a reading in Queens, just tell me where. I promise to gather your bones only for good. I was not swallowed by the darkness between two buildings. I don’t want to die in the south like so many of mine. I want to be carried back. 2. I dreamed we were digging in a field in Rolesville looking for an earth we knew the name of. You stepped into the hole, looked behind you and gestured me in. I saw every lover who held you while your children slept in rooms of small heaters, you wrap the blankets so tight, afraid of any cold that might get in. 3. I said my goodbyes, my dead will not come. I will not see a cardinal in the city so I drew one on my chest. A coop inside a coop inside of me. Leaving is necessary some say. There is a whole ocean between you and a home you can’t fix your tongue to speak. Others do not want me no further than a length of a small yard, they ask where are you going Tyree? Your mama here, you’ve got stars in your eyes. A ship in your movement.
Copyright © 2018 by Tyree Daye. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 23, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.