|
She must have known I couldn’t understand why every time she’d look at me like every time was the first time. Like each time would be the last time. Like that one moment in time was the only time there ever was, and ever would be, so it needed to count. Like I was the only thing she’d ever seen- the only thing she’d ever remember-so she needed to take all of me in. not the space between us, or the world behind me.
Just me.
She was barely big enough to wrap her arms around my neck then. The soles of her feet had just discovered the feel of sand. And her knees were still learning how to carry her little frame.
She sat besides me, and began to serenade my ears with tales of what she saw: the child that had given birth to the man sitting next to her.
Before I learned to measure my worth by the number of zeros on my bank statement and reduced my name to job descriptions.
Before what school I went to and where I live became the entirety of me and uniforms I wear meant more than the smiles I share.
Before the amassing and losing positions and possessions reduced my days to an endless cycle of the attainment and consequent defecation of bread.
She took me back to when I went deep sea diving in the Serengeti for star-fish and thrived in a sky of dolphins and mermaids
When I walked bare-bodied in the rain and went sunbathing at midnight.
When caterpillars bloomed into butterflies in the safety of my palms.
When, like her, I could still stand so tall that the stars draped my shoulders.
She was still so young, and so wise then, that her lips had still mastered our tongue.
She spoke half native half god, and she knew I could only understand a quarter of what she was saying.
So, as her words broke down my chains and drifted into my conscience she put my hand in hers and let me follow the lines of her palms back to the forgotten;
Back to me.
__________________
conquering lion of judah.
|
