Someday I'll Love Maya Marshall

You're not what your mother says you are.You don't fuck just to be touched.Your nieces know you.You fall in love.Like you, sunflowers and hydrangeas grow.See it. Your little house is stable,yellow, cerulean, and green.Imagine it.People you've loved come, eat with you.You teach, find pathways from your desk.You wonder, and when frightened, you press.You are enough. You know that now.You learned to set the little girl down.

       I laugh loudly,       am not easily swayed.       I've lost cause to be defensive.       I don't seek annihilation.       Déjà vu has led me somewhere I can handle.       I say no when I prefer.

Dear one, you have been wrong.You have failed, and will.

       I forgive you. Daily.       I forgive.       I am not a burden. I am not a sore.       I do not court misery and call it work.       I smile with ease.Our dead increase.        I still love them. I let them go.       I live and fight not against       shadows, not against ourself.My love,        I am a user of tools.       I am a maker of things.

Workshop leader Fred D'Aguiar at the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, Oxford University, 2016

Photograph by Linda Smith © 2016