DaughterSong: A Poetics of Memory
Ma this is a daughtersong for you. And it feels like I met you, right here in the living room of my small apartment, on your birthday-- a mere 23 years after you left this earth realm. Sitting in my living room with a ghost of you felt like a dream of a dream. I've always wondered why we call it the living room when it felt like we were dying. But there we were in the living room between the world of the dead and the world of the living. We bend time like that. We magic like that.
A Tender-hearted me turns grief from tears to daughtersong, ache to heartbeat, pain to love.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the poetics of a black feminist life, a tender life, a miracle of life, a beautiful life. I remember my mother. The woman whose own life was a quiet black feminist poetics I weep remembering. I weep because it was so beautiful, your life. A felt life. And I still marvel at the way you wore this life with such grace in only 36 short years.
I never quite found the words to say how you leaving broke my heart wide open. I remember the day we buried you and the ache that pushed through my tender, 14-year-old body. I was aching all over. I remember feeling my heart turn into a puzzle. I felt the pieces scatter. I remember how the tears wouldn't stop. I remember wondering how I was still breathing when I was also breaking, how I was still walking when I felt like I was dying. I cried so much that day, the tears drenching my entire body, almost as if they were washing me --although I honestly had hoped they'd drown me so I could be with you again.
This is a daughtersong for you, ma.
Memory in word form: I made an altar for my mother today. The poetics of memory coming into flesh. I gathered words, and pictures, and foods, and placed them around my home. And I waited for her. I waited for her because I still believe in miracles. When I first read Edwidge Danticat’s invitation to "pretend this is a time of miracles and we [still] believe in them" it gave me chills. Sometimes all I have is a pretend promise that miracles still exist and it gets me from one breath to the next. Your memory haunts me but I like the ghosts. A daughtersong for mama.
The aesthetics of memory looks like adorning a space just for you, complete with purple flowers and soft music and food, good food because you always said we deserved the best.
My new heart still yearns for you. But it doesn't ache like it used to. I am in awe of how much it grew; I marvel at the way my too soft heart has somehow bridged the broken shards back together. Auntie Ronnie says only love can do that, put you back together after a hurting like that. I still touch the flowers that have bloomed in the cracks.
This is a daughtersong for you, ma.
When a Black girl loses her mother the earth quivers, a volcano erupts, the universe shifts.
Loss is such a funny word. How do we imagine we can lose a person? I know human beings aren't possessions and I know that I cannot lose you because you were only a gift to me. We were always on borrowed time. But some days my body still aches like it did 23 years ago because I miss you.
The grief holds me so close I feel like I might suffocate. And somehow I keep breathing and it softens. Ma, this is a daughtersong for you.
I wish my heart understood reason and time, but it doesn't. All it knows is that it wants you and you are not here. I weep. Half way between prayers and sobs I felt you. Ma. This is a daughtersong for you. ma.mommy.mama.mother.mam mam.mam. All the names I had for you feel like gifts. Uttering your name still feels like the closest I’ve ever gotten to god. I use the little g because I still believe big G might actually bring you back.
