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| Photo by Iranian Visual Artist Shirin Neshat- Learn more about her: http://www.iranchamber.com/art/sneshat/shirin_neshat.php By Octavia McBride-Ahebee |
1. It is your spirit they seek to exorcise,
to push with thin prayers and secret, celebratory praises
from our house
where we had planted flowers ofprotection.
Jump inside of me,
away from the swinging incense
and gutted chants
meant to trap and strip your retreating soul.
I will take you for a dance
across the very floors where we made life,
Barron's Sunshower will frame your requiem,
and restore your faith.
2. I am glad you are home with me,
in a house where love has always reigned,
running the hallways I had run,
racing to be a man for me.
You will grow, again,
to shed the weight of dead conventions,
to repeal pledges made to voles and vamps,
to become not my groom, again,
but our son.
3. What pushed you to jump realms,
to leap across what we were living,
to even plan under the star that brought me to you,
for your departure,
for the hole in my heart,
for the one in your head?
4. I sleep now,
in a sitting position,
my eyes pulled wide open
by pills I pop in neat intervals
to regulate my sadness,
while I wait to catch you
swinging on the arc of a night rainbow.
I swing on my father's redbrick terrace,
the one that is not covered-open to the elements,
I swing not back and forth in a rhythm that calms,
but side to side,
in a motion meant to evoke the spirits,
to wake the dead,
to push you from your hiding place
so I can say goodbye.
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