War Cry: A Poem for my Grandmother

Crying cleanse

In 28 years ain’t never seen grandma cry

I wonder how she gets the blood stains

From life out

How she moves on without shedding tears

Like a snake never shedding its skin

Just keeps in all in but still find room for the new skin

All of it

inside

Skin thick from all bullets of life

Now she got bulletproof skin

Tear ducks shot

I wonder if she cries alone

I wonder if she will learn how to cry

To release all that life that’s built up in her chest

If her 110lbs body gets heavy

Tired

If she forgets things not because she 82 but because she got good practice of hiding

Her feelings, things she rather forget

Her body having to remind her that she is still here

Keep telling herself the same thing she tells us

“It will be alright, everything is okay”

but it’s not

So she keep holding it all in

holding me, my siblings, my grandpa, my mother

Like she held her mother, sister, Kelly, even Kevin

Had to call the shots on pulling the plug on her oldest baby

Cuz a man pulled the trigger on him

Life cut short

Maybe that’s why she don’t cry

Because she has been cut open too many times

Too many pieces of her heart cut at

cut away

So it’s hard to feel

to release

She was 80

They cut her open

Up her chest

Her first surgery

Her only scar