On Visiting My Ex-Wife Of 16 Years
After Her Third Brain Tumor Operation
1.
they opened your head
to clear the brush growth from your brain
they dug into your skull
to save you
you never doubted your survival
like your name you were ready
stronger than suffering, we shall overcome
evidently your new favorite song
now you re-arrange yourself: hand, heart
head singing together
you construct a new nation
from the older bones
the distant memories and flesh
that refuses to surrender
despair will not dine
on your soul
your will to live is your candle
illuminating whatever dark
chance and circumstance conspired
to descend upon you
your flame rides through those storms
occasionally flickering but ultimately always strong
2.
for a third time you are learning yourself
tasting anew everything you do, motions
you formerly subconsciously made
now require a conscious kick-start
something as simple as walking
can no longer easily be taken for granted
who really remembers tumbling as a baby
people smiling and encouraging you “get up,
get up. you can do it” and embracing you
when you did it—the different sounds
that came out of one’s mouth learning to talk
the different items put into one’s mouth
learning to taste—who remembers
the struggle to learn how to be who we are?
3.
and so to visit you
in these momentous moments
when regardless of what we see before us
the snapshots inside of us are stronger, more
potent indices, emotional spurs that prod us
i can never forget when you…
do you remember when we…
was yesterday really that long ago
how we have aged
thrown into the sharpest silhouette
as memories pirouette
on today’s stage
so
what now? you on one shore
i on another, separated by a river of years
so much water flowing under
so many bridges
what now?
i wave to you from a distant shore
my hand is familiar
my touch is long ago
it hurts to sit in a small room
and be so distant from one who was so close
and so i shake off the cloak of sentimentality
and leave
aware at the back of my mind
that the simple act of saying goodbye
—or more precisely, “tutaonana”
those swahili syllables we taught our children
to recite, not goodbye but we will see each other again
we will see each other again
and the question descends the staircase
with me: when?
that query’s younger sibling
innocently posing the more brutal interrogation
“why—do you really want to go through this again?”
4.
by happenstance
i saw gumbi the other day
she asked had i seen you
this was before my visit
i said no
and told her about other issues, other people
close friends literally dying
she shooed away those words
with a curt and cutting response
like they were a fly or an annoying mosquito
ain’t none of them
the mother of yall children
5.
and so it goes
trying to make a whole life
out of disparate pieces
parts of a whole puzzle
that do not interlock
my life is a mosaic
full of jagged interruptions
and tayari you are
in both substance and shadow
touching even
when you can only haltingly move
your right hand
—kalamu ya salaam