Come Home

How do you miss a person without wanting them back. My mind is a landfill of our memories and every time I try to clean it up, the rubbish accumulates again. Your being, your voice, your memories, you. You return to me. I am a recycled version of our story. I write now because you encouraged me to. I remember you in every poem and in every drawing. Different  materials are recycled differently. I’ve been dead to you for a long time now. But for me, you’ve never quite touched ground. You’ve never quite reached the graveyard. You seem to be in a constant state of dying.

Maybe it’s the Black in me. I can conceptualise the bullet I chose to remove you from my life but never quite the gun. I remember your screams and agony but never quite the body.  I don’t remember there ever being a body. So how do I learn how to bury you. I started writing about you so I could choose a tombstone more accurately. I’ve not been able to make your funeral list. My heart refuses to attend.

You’re in a constant state of dying so there is no body, no casket, no tombstone appropriate for you. I don’t know if you would rather be cremated with the fire of my love. Perhaps I am the one who should be buried alongside: my heart,  grief, breathing, poems,  journals.

How do I miss a person without wanting them back. What does it mean to let go when my love for you can never die. How do I learn to bury love. I have grown accustomed to metaphors about grief, death, ghosts and funerals with you. None of it is real. I have chosen not to bury you.

At least I have picked out my funeral outfit. it is a black silk dress sown with your heart and your being. The straps tell stories of your childhood and the shape of the dress underlines your love for me. Or at least the love you had. Or at least what I thought was love.

I beg you, do not bury me alive. I am still waiting for your funeral date. It seems like you are already a ghost because I can feel the haunting. I need you to hug me. Every month I take my black silk dress off the hanger but my body refuses to wear it. It is not time. So I change into a white dress and pretend I am in the heavens and you are there with me.

White, the colour of purity, or so it seems. White, the colour of the Divine, or so it seems. You would have loved this new version of me. But I think you’ve already picked a tombstone and perhaps you are currently burying me. I’ll forgive you if you dig for my body but please do it now. White, the colour of hope, or so it seems. But my white dress is also stained.

Can you please be non-human with me for a second I need your touch. I don’t trace freedom on the lips of many other Black bodies. I hate that I always write about you.

If the role of the artist is to make unknown things known, the only thing I am making known is you. Your funeral date is the date I stop writing about you so perhaps you will never die because all I know now is how to write. I’ve replaced the speaking with writing. Everyone got tired of me announcing the wrong funeral date. Bare with me. Do I have to bury freedom with you? You introduced me to her please let me keep her a little more. You’re in a state of dying but I’m not sure if it’s from the bullet or if it’s because that’s all our Black bodies know to do.

Remember that I am bleeding too. Perhaps your choice of weapon was a knife. It seems like the kind of death you would have wanted: rage filled and personal. What do you do with the dying but not dead yet.

How do you miss a person without wanting them back. How do I trace the lines of happiness that I’ll never forget without begging the pencil to trace me too. I remember. I don’t forget my love. I don’t forget, my love. I don’t, forget my love. Do you see. I re-write the same stories, the same sentences, hoping each different reiteration is a prayer or a manifestation for you. Please come home. I haven’t chosen your tombstone because I still believe in miracles. If there is no body then you are still alive. My love never dies, please come home. My soul can dig for my body if it is already buried. I can learn how to forgive, please come home. I’m afraid you’ll pick out your own funeral date, outfit, pastor and body. I cannot bury you but time will return your body to the earth. I beg you one last time, please come home.