From My Mother To Her Late Daughter - Aaliyah Jihad Poem by Scott Sims

My little being, they tainted your obituary with wrong seven letters, S U I C, like this misery was something you wanted, like my belly burst sin, like I didn't thread your pieces together with the only joy I had left.

This home is your shrine now, your portrait is painted in Jack Daniels stains in the linoleum, the smell of your hair is trapped in billows of fireplace smoke, your laugh is a haunted house theme song I keep on a loop.

You are still the soft pink stain in the coldbathroom floor, you know, curled up next to the toilet, sobbing gunshot heaves every 3: 532 a.m., every sink, every tub is your pale bone mocking me, saying I can't bleach you out of the tiles. I can't wring you out of the house you splattered into home

Only you could make a crime of a mother's kiss, of a hazelnut blessing. Your kind of relentless is suckling milk until it's blood. It's shaving your skin into reeds of sympathy flowers, leaving your mother with a carving knife as a suicide note, as a receipt likeyou could simply be returned. There's a light in the foyer that flickers your shade of crimson. Guests have learned no to question you, mommy's little bullet, you echo of your brother. Sickle cell and suicide, you two are my womb turned on its side.

There are seven letters I can't bury, your name is carved into every sidewalk. Aaliyah! Can't harvest your tombstone, the jeep's hum is a church hymn, Main Street is your funeral procession, my tongue is a never ending eulogy. My fingers still pulse from the fifth mirror I've shattered trying to escape your reflection. It won't stop saying how much you look like me.