As soon as I could write
I remember writing poems
In little notebooks that were cute and shown
I would like the way they sound
And the way they rhymed
The way they looked
Short and concise.
And that I always knew what to say
Because its just the way.
They grew in my heart
And when I had hurt to express
You best believe I could not write a better poem.
I had stopped for some reasons
Mostly due to pain and suffering
What had happened, happened in this specific period
But this story isn’t about that
In this year of tragedy
That had been offered to my family
And not just once, not just twice, but three times
Like a charm gone upside down and up side wrong
Two deaths that hit me hardest
For reasons that do not resemble one another
Little did I know
The one death I could not remember
would be the reason I’d lose my grandmother
To me, seemingly two decades to early
She didn’t want to die like her own mother
My father would remind me not to judge his mother
What I am to do but cry?
As I think back, I wish I had offered her a better goodbye
Perhaps a poem about what it meant to me
to be the apple of her eye.
I can never look at a fruit tree
Without remembering the smell of summer
On the hill picking plums with her partner
my father’s father
He reminds me to pick the ones just eaten
By the nature that surrounds us
The sweetest is what is on the tree, enjoyed by someone before us
I wish I could have written a poem about them
But I was too young to remember
Anything but what they both meant to me
Separately.
I was all that mattered.
