My grandmotherâs war, not yours
Itâs not the climax for your white savior novel
Itâs the hand that grabbed me from my countryâs womb
My grandmother has survived three times
She cannot write her own name
But she has swallowed enough words of what has happened in those days to give birth to epics about the human suffering the night never could hide
So donât ask her to retrace with the blood of her people
Our peopleâs water was stained a red summer sunset with bodies of babies
And I attempt to protect her in her days of peace
So stop trying to dig up bodies long buried
War is not beautiful and neither are her memories
My Grandmotherâs Tongue
I wrote a poem about all the wars
Of my grandmotherâs 80-something years
In the foreign manâs tongue
She cannot read & I cannot speak fluently
To my grandmother in my mother tongue I do not hold enough words In the sinking ship of my stomach
To translate my love to her In love that she can understand
With words I can never say
And conversations that will never be had I replaced my grandmotherâs tongue
That tasted like mangos and bananas and rice
And thousands of years of speaking love and
Weaving stories about nomads and the ocean and people so black and beautiful
You almost had to look away
With the foreign manâs tongue I speak fluently words that do not belong to me
And I desperately want to ask my grandmother all the questions I could never figure out how to fix my American tongue to say
Ayeyo, what was it like when your hoyo died with her breast milk still wet on your tongue?
Ayeyo, how did you survive the anger and pain when they opened your legs and sliced and diced?
Ayeyo, what was it like to walk with your grandfatherâs camels with the sweet desert wind in your face, to know this was the one place on Earth you truly belonged?
Do you still long for it?
Ayeyo, do you still pray silently for the babies you lost and the country that lost you?
Ayeyo, why did you have a suitcase packed for all those years, ready to go back to a land that spit you out?
All I want to do is crawl into the innermost room of your heart
And listen to all the answers that will pour from your chest
And surely it will be in your mother tongue
My grandmotherâs tongue
gummygunk
jbbartram-illu
theartofmadeline
2087
dededos
yousharknotpass
