Mckendy Fils-Aimé

Sipèstisyon

if you go to your child’s funeral, you will cause the death of your other child

i waited for you at Kenny’s wake

the church slowly filling with mourners 

dressed in white, the last of the evaporated 

milk dripping into a mixture of crémas. 

when you arrived, i saw only a specter 

stealing your muscle. your legs: a cathedral 

cursed by dystrophy. i wondered where is she?

the auntie who chain-smoked menthols 

out of her ‘95 dodge caravan: the perpetual party

whose music could be heard three houses down,

the hoarder who owned an orphanage 

of faulty machines, each one with an IOU 

for fixing, the godmother who adored me 

& despite an acidic sisterhood & her rhum-

soaked marriage, still chose to love 

from afar, holding memories like mementos,

even the ones crafted with pyrite.

& i think you taught me to be broken

doesn’t mean without worth. i came to visit once after 

it rained. your house was clean, no pet projects 

or cracked trinkets. only a woman 

& a disease without a repair guide,

a vilomah longing for a crib, an illness

that i wished the storm could carry away. 

& i wanted to say           

 i’m still here  

                                  if it means anything    

 i’m still here               

                                  if it counts

Sipèstisyon

Don’t point with your index finger at a fruit-bearing tree. The fruit that you’re pointing at will be a good-for-nothing bad fruit.

in an effort to encourage healthy eating

my love & i sign up for a produce delivery service.

a week later, the first order arrives. 

we open the box & inside is a circus

of misshapen crops: three-legged carrots,

strawberries split like forked tongues, 

apples in mid-mitosis.

my love explains that they are rejects,

deemed unworthy of grocery stores

& sent into exile. we gather our outcasts 

to make a meal. & i think of all the times

that i have been called not good 

or not good enough. caught in the cross-

hairs of someone else’s doubt: a tree 

on the opposite end of nature's index. 

but i’m as resilient as a fig

as defiant as a field of echinacea. 

i will wait for the rain to come 

& if it doesn’t, i will dare to grow anyway. 

watch me dig my feet into the dirt 

taking water between my toes. 

watch me unfurl my arms 

to stuff fistfuls of sunlight into my mouth. 

watch me nourish & be nourishment. 

watch me become my own harvest.