Letter to my sister

I have turned our childhood into a few dozen verses;

there are places for dramatic pause,

and where memory failed,

I embellished a bit.

You’ve grown impatient with me

and my so-called poetic license;

I don’t remember that

has become your weary mantra.

D,

I am learning to excavate the good times too.

Can’t you see where I’ve colored some words?

Inserted those tender moments?

A famous writer once said that eventually

I will tire of myself and will be compelled

to tell the I-less stories….I anxiously await that moment.

But for now, I want to tell them about our war with mama’s illness

and how at school we were maimed for being foreign.

Remember D?

When they chased us up Tioga Street

and accused us of having voodoo and

scanned our dark bodies for tribal scars

and discovered the cayenne pepper we had hidden;

to throw in their faces,

to sting them,

to make them fear us,

to be left alone,

to be African.

D,

I have managed to poem all my pain;

tell me,

what do you do with yours?