Take it all for him

I’d nearly lost all faith in a connection,
this thread which has flowed in our blood streams
since our births, a mark of your breath
exploding in a silent, sterile room, women holding onto each other’s hands.
Some nights when the weight of his love,
my father’s broken bottle affection bled music into my ears.

But lately I’ve been listening to Def jam poetry sessions differently,
and I’ve heard that each word has a voice, an identity.
The poems I’ve composed are rows of paper people,
immortal in between my palms and they can be my DNA.
Recompose my bones after days of packaging my personality
away, leaving only room for a silhouette.

To glide across the surface of this paper,
thread words across this living room.
Spread hope with each molecule verb,
I’ve got design drawings in my eyelids , light blue outlines,
erasing your bruises , watching his veins of decorated breath.
And today nothing is going to clot our conversation,
I’ve served a life sentence trying to bring you back.

Like here God “You can take my blood, roses of death,
which only ever bloomed under the warm light of a microscope.
Have my paper bags which were only ever his oxygen archives,
and my sight which watched over him.
You can have my handprints, these fingertips are numb from writing
and spell-bound by words which were his prayer sheets.”
I’ll have his smile.