To Bring Ice Cream Back to Trucks

And i say:

Is there anyone who can make this dawn taste rich again?

Because some of us-

-some of these mornings-

are dragging ourselves out of the bed, one toe at a time,

Following the exhausted whispers of yesterday - to the light of today - and into the stretch of a many tomorrows that we don’t know how long they will last

or what they will look like

Or what fight we are having,

and if it’s just in our minds or, in the reality of our moment to moment, lived experiences.

Still, I’m trying to remember when the days were as bright as the sun allowed them to be,

where popsicles and ice cream came on trucks

that drove up my grandmother's street.

and our parents, sat on porches next to friends,

holding neighborhood gossip in one arm and babies in the other,

Talking about Momma Zoe and Poppa Chah-lie,

That's Mississippi for Charlie.

He was the first to kick it off -

-the memory loss -

Who knew!? A generational disease traveling from cotton picking blood to valedictorian DNA,

crossing gender boundaries, and lines that separate states,

It can get dark sometimes, now, in the middle of the day,

Those are echoes in my ears as i attempt to nourish these golden years with tenderness, compassion, and love

Fighting constantly against frustration and a loss that has but hasn’t occurred

Unwinding fading time and memory together, I try to meet her where she is with my words,

not where i want her to be.

or where I wish she was.

When my grandmother told me of her only granddaughter

and how she looked somewhat like me

but with less nappy hair,

I stared at her through the eyes of my tears from the inside out,

Time paused.  And a new clock began ticking and I became her second heir stranger

Strange how she remembered my name and not my face,

Actually, I’m not even sure how much she liked me, but i learned i loved her knowing me,

And no matter how hard I prayed for God to show me the past in real time, that day never came back for me

It never returned,

as if it was never there,

ever earned,

Like I never ate ice cream outside, in her front yard.

Who do we become when the lights go out and our parents can’t figure out what key turns the lock they’ve lived behind for more than 30 years

We repeat conversations around here

and hear the loud voices of people who have been buried for as long as I’ve been a high school graduate,

And still we rise,

 to wipe eyes and hope to see a glimpse of an old life,

But this new way is our present,

The gift that keeps on reliving

Caregiving

is when you open hands and let them wipe the cheekbones of faces that used to stare you down,

It's, closed fingers wrapped around wheelchair handles,

Pushing once again into the sterilized, well lit doctor’s room

Just to discuss progression

Projection

Medicine that isn’t helping

Cures that haven’t come,

Food that needs digesting, minds that are forgetting what it means to be alive and how to use your body to prevent failure to thrive,

We lose so much in that unspoken space where we don’t know what is coming to replace WHO we know,

And so, we have these days where our shoulders are low and

our emotions have run off the handles, feeling quite like a live wire too close to the water but too thirsty not to drink,

when we feel like we are at risk,

risking it all,

can't think,

can't blink because if we do, there could be a fire on the floor bigger than the one before,

Bigger than the one that burned it down,

Bigger than the one that took the crown off our loved ones head and left town with it,

Pawning and trading it off and then returning to place a worn hat,

with a blank receipt

on top of a full head of hair that is now starting to thin out and recede,

She doesn’t paint her fingernails anymore

.....or collect dream books.

And i can’t see

me

in her eyes

They are set in a different dimension than me,

Than all of us

I see it

Especially when the blues music is turned on and she grabs her own shoulders,

rocking from side to side like she’s trying to break through an escape room to get back to all she knew,

and she looks at me like I'm a labyrinth

Too intricate a puzzle to try to recall

So she carries her best conversations with the those who went to the promise land plenty of years ago...

i sometimes cook with tears seasoning the boiling water

And i can’t lie

I've spiritually wondered if by doing so, am I giving her a piece to remember me by

So each meal prep container has been carefully given unto with my living grief,

These mental funerals that i attend sometimes in my sleep after weeping myself there for a few hours don’t ever yield the miraculous WOW moments I’m in seek - ...

It is us,

Who watch the fade roll in like a rushed tide,

stealing from our beaches all that they can pull away

Last week, it was me and today, it’s everything before 1988

And so

I say is there anyone who can make the next dawn taste rich again,

Bring it back to those delicious, fleeting moments that i never knew had an expiration date looming. ...i still have things i want to say,

Questions i want to ask,

Flowers I want to watch start blooming, together,

Like we did every summer when i searched for 4 leaf clovers as my grandmother yelled ‘good luck’

Take me, back!

Bring me to light

Bring me back to space,

Bring soul back to faces,

Bring time, please

Bring time

 So i can catch my breath

I don’t even know what all i have left to do, for today or

For tomorrow, let me sit with my sorrow for a second and sort some things out,

Damn, time,

Bring time!

Break time, family time, memory time,

Any time, bring me,

Back to my mine...

back to my grandmother’s mind

Bring love

to sun,

Back to dawn

 to rich,

to us

Bring ice cream

back to trucks