you have to bury things deeper if you want them to stay put

if i don’t write what i know to be true, experienced, wondered, lusted after, lost and/or forgotten, i won’t (don’t) sleep right. if i don’t write love poems to men i love, my sentiments shrivel and die. when i truly dislike someone, i ignore them. squeeze my eyes shut tight until they leave my life, my presence, my table, my bus stop. if i don’t speak, it’s because i’m not interested or i’m too interested. context clues. if i don’t choose what happens next, i become victim of the randomness – a choice just the same. if i don’t think i’m the shit, maybe you will, maybe you want. want. if i don’t want, then i don’t will. if i don’t will, then i don’t feel. if i don’t feel, ask what’s the deal? if i don’t deal, my love ain’t real. but usually, one should just ask. assssk. not ax. another lesson learned. today the prisoner wrote me again (would this be more interesting if it were more diaristic?). i ignored his last correspondence because it was full of the venom that siblings sometimes share in the name of protecting each other. the family. the jewels and pearls and little sisters and what not. he threatened to torture and/or maim one recent boyfriend-type claiming that because of our age difference and because we knew each other when i was younger that this individual must be some sort of perverse pedophile who really should just die. funny thing about the judge behind bars, he can be ignored. and was. then rumor of his potential demise appeared in my dream the other night. in the dream, during a night gone worse, a phone call reached me from my homegirl saying she’d heard from the prison that my brother had multiple ulcers, had begun to hemorrhage and multiple other atrocities that made his death feel near. i got the feeling, during that dream, that the news was too much for the living. i purposefully woke myself from a hard, sluggish sleep, knowing my limits. it was the feeling that jerked my heart, plunging emotions down to my belly, reminding me of my mortality and worse, of issues related to surviving the deceased. i woke up and was nervous for the rest of the day, and somehow ready for the bad news when my father (who doesn’t call much) called later that day. alas, brother bear wasn’t near-death as i felt in my fibers. but a letter came the day after (that would be today). he somehow wanted to recognize the venom and assert its position in love. sibling, protective love. he admitted to his insanity and in so many words, asked to be excused because his viciousness was emitted out of the love for his baby sister.

i ain’t wit it.

but i go on. i will write him something back eventually. i will publish all the letters between us these last 11 years because i’m american. they work well as a “collection” of “pieces.” america. they also “work” because people want and need to know human relationships. i suppose this is why i write. to get the shit off me, to release the weight of words and experience. to record. to promise and nourish. promise? untruth. i make no promises of words. things change. people go. memories last a while and then they go too. maybe not if kunta was your great-great-grandfather. my great-great was a white man who didn’t want the story told and still i carry his name.

you have to bury things deeper if you want them to stay put.