My Brother’s Keeper

If her childhood was a color

It’d be light grey.

Sky on a rainy day,

And again at dawn,

Clouds during a whimsical winter,

When darkness and light collide.

I wonder,

What if her prayers never met a God?

What does it mean to be siblings and unrelated

To be siblings and unscorned,

Unbound, unbroken, unbruised?

I’d welcome them.

But have been robbed of them.

There’s no mending that.

There’s no peace in that.

Who is that in the bathroom

Crying in the shower?

Praying that God heal her

He(ar)re, her cry.

Hear her hurt.

All she can hear

Are her elders telling her,

“Well, He’s still your brother”.

What a monster of a memory.

Bruises unseen,

Trying to cut the seams of this silence.

That don’t disturb the peace, silence,

That waiting in the clinic, silence,

And I’m so tired, I’m bout to snap

I’m about to blow THE FUCK UP

And it’s long overdue now!

Cause where were you??

How dare you hear the little girl

Hiding in the bathroom

Crying in the shower again

Trying to make sense of her life again

How dare you see her innocence

Surrounding her like a bed of ash

And know that only fire will catch

How dare you ask her

To love and hate someone for the sake of your sins?

The unspeakable audacity

You don’t know how hard it was writing this.

Or how hard it is saying this

But there’s freedom in saying this.

I survived without letting you stain me.

And though I love you

I don’t forgive you

But if your sins ever met a God

Maybe, just maybe

She will.