Salvation Psalms
Location
I have forgotten the taste of prayer
Have salt bath bathed the bruises on my heart
They shot my brother while I slept
I've watched it happen every night since then
My mother prayed at his altar
I ask god to help me finish this poem
She clutched on to his casket
I gripped on to my pen
She traced his face with her fingertips
I wrote a poem about him
My mother holds her stomach
Says she can still feel part of him moving
I know her placentas a palace for dead butterfly carcasses
That anxiety holds her hostage in her own head
My hands shake when I'm writing
They make me write my brother's eulogy
It begins to sound like another dead brown boy`s poem
my soul stains the sheet
I re watch him dying
the pen bleeds for me
I try to rinse out the taste of his last I love you
I don't say his name out loud
I pick at the butterfly's wings between my teeth
As my mother clutches her drink
I cling on to my notebook
I know a simile never saved a soul
That a metaphor never drank itself to sleep to numb it's imagery
But I made my mother stop drinking for the 3 minutes of me performing
I swear for the first time in 6 months it happened she looked at me
I know alliteration saves no lives
But i've found my brothers laughter in the depths of myself
Its begun to sound like my own
I asked god to help me write this poem
But ive found salvation in my poetry