MY MOTHER SPEAKS

Photo from Unsplash.

My mother, she spoke of you
She told me how you broke open the sky 
And carried her through the desert
How she gripped the wheel 
and whispered hope 
till vision of you burst forth
like water from dry places. 

She told me she contended with you
wrestling you on the road,
in the hospital, on the house
as the slow smoke of cigarettes 
and ruined cities and empty beds
wafted through the hole in the sky

Like incense on the altar
drifting towards the rafters 
and out the broken windows of our empty temples
a holy offering to you
is it holy 
are these too holy words

My mother speaks of you still
pointing towards the horizon saying just there 
as though the sky had an end in a place where 
you and he and she are 
waiting for me

She spoke so much
I hurried the place 
chasing her finger from 
the hidden to the end of the visible
until I found the place the sun sets
but always after the dying and before the light

So I waited and I waited
for the dawn’s twilight arms to draw me towards the living
and I waited
but all I found were empty homes 
ghost stories where bodies began

So I returned and asked her how to pray
how to hold your name on my tongue 
write your words across my body 
to mar the touch of men I called my brothers

I repeat her prayers till they are mine and me
pull the words like poison
inhaling death to leave behind an empty life
I say my prayers
her prayers
your prayers

The ones she taught me to hold until words become light
lifting out of me through the sky
I say these prayers until they are mine
and I can pray like you
through the desert
in the hospital 
in the empty bed
on the house

My mother, she spoke of you
but I don’t know how
so I wait
drawing words, signum crucis, across my body
till life springs forth from this dry and empty place
and I can say your name