My grandmother tells me
you need a good tongue
in life, you gotta show love with it, you gotta demand
love with it. In the same breath she reminds me
of the benefits of drinking Ovaltine before bed,
how remembering to heat my milk first is key
& I tell her
yes, I know. Like a promise,
like a prayer. I do not tell her how often
I hold my tongue, I do not tell her I cannot find Ovaltine
in my local markets. I only tell her yes—
…………………………………………………. is that not what it means
to show love with this tongue, to lie for her sake? Her joy
is so dependent on my insistence that I am in the kitchen
every evening dressed in garlic & onion & oil. That I wake
in the mornings to incense smoke & god
…………………………………………………………… on my tongue &
I do not tell her about the heartbreak until it is over. I tell her
about cut flowers I buy myself from the grocery store,
how they’ll sit on my table for weeks, mimicking life
even though they’ve long died, brittle bones on the brink
of collapse, until I remember to take them out with the trash
& then I do it again.
……………………………. I cannot keep plants alive, it is a testimony
to all I did not inherit from my grandmother, her hands so eternally
wed to earth. Her South American soil birthed vegetables, nurtured
a livelihood. I believe her body is bound in Guyana in a way
it could never be bound in the States. I wonder often
if a part of her
………………. is already buried there & when her legs give out
from a fall I think, yes, it must be. Yes, fragments of her
are scattered about & calling on me. Some days I breathe
her in more than others & when I pray it’s her voice,
not mine
………………… that echoes in my apartment.
When I leave my partner of six years, I apologize
for choosing myself over us, but if I am to demand love
with this tongue, I cannot swallow myself
whole for anyone else.
…………………………………….. When I visit home,
my grandmother asks me about marriage,
about children, & I tell her not yet. Remember
what you told me about getting my education?
How no one can take what’s inside of my head?
& she says
yes, I remember.
But her hands tremble & I know she wants to give me
a wedding before she dies & I know, she will not be able
to give me a wedding before she dies so yes,
……………………………………………………………. I lie to her.
I lie about Ovaltine & the plants I’ve killed & the love
I left because
……………………………………. I am too much
like her. A woman so bound by what she believes
she must do that no one but the gardens she’s tended
hear her cry & I want to ask my god how much
of the land is salted with her tears but I refrain
because god will not tell me & my grandmother
will not tell me & I cannot show her these hands
I am trying to build a life with, how they are so much
like dried up riverbeds, like barren soil because we
are nothing if not withholders
…………………………………………………. of loss.
by Jessica Ram
from Earthly Gods
Publisher: Game Over Books,
September 6, 2024.
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