We begin and end on that tilted geography of a cliff,

past the place where young girls resemble the barrel end

of a pistol. Mama breathes incense and clutches onto

the English alphabet like a rosary, translates her

existence from a language which has three words for

death. I tell her things she does not understand. How I

will become a valley of intentions. Good and bad, I tell

her. Wrong and wronger. This is carnage. This is where

hungry mouths become synonymous with love. That

incision in the middle dismembers another mother

tongue where it becomes whole, and I hang the

skeletons in my closet. Because every minute, a boy

who learned the shape of his father’s contempt dies.

Because the torrent never stops, and I’m still falling,

waiting for the rest of my roots in past tense.

Tomorrow, I will sit with my brother and pull spindles

out of his head. We will break trinkets just for the sake

of mending them, and I will be grateful that we are

born naked and unholy. That tomato stem with the

suckers cascading like a waterfall of second chances.

That ampersand tethering mama’s name to papa’s own.

To defame, & disguise, & dismember. Somehow, the

pericarps will spell out a bittersweet apology.

Somehow, love will stick to my skin like molasses

and I will become a valley of intentions.