Plantains
The best kind of plantains are too, too ripe. Blackish. Edging on the cusp of life and death. Intoxicating in their sweetness and their greater than God intended alcohol content. And —as I always forget— too soft for heavy hands. Yes, I can't fry them without the saccharine slice of heritage falling apart, but they sate something inside of me. They give me a taste of what little culture I can grasp, what part of me, torn between America, Jamaica, and the melanin blessing my skin demands me to be. Or what everyone else demands me to be.
Maybe I can block it all out.
Pay attention.
The sticky splitting of a plantain already bursting at the seams. The knife hitting the cutting board –the cutting boards my mother refuses to use out of habit. (She never used them in Jamaica, why use them here in the country she’s called home for thirty years?) The beep of the oven I know so well. Warmth and sweetness fills the air; a flavor I give to others but not myself. And so I wait, hoping for that too sweet taste of islands I can never feel a connection to but wish for in my deepest of hearts; hoping to fill the void of non belonging I've scraped out of the rotting American wood work; hoping if I shift my shoulder this way, shift my shoulder that way, I can get comfortable in this too large non island, non American, all awkward space they've made and I've made for me.