This Is Not A Poem Poem by Pasha Satara

& it all goes in cycles, the way we're born, the way we live, the way we die. i've been the flower child & the woman holding the flowers at my grandfather's grave, ready to jump in with him & let the soil cover us. not letting go is a habit of mine. like wanting control & chocolate & another chance. yes, he calls me his strange angel & i cannot disagree, but i prefer unique, eclectic, accelerated, streaked w/conscience & perhaps a resemblance to musical riffs hidden in the walls. & roxy, i swear, i do hear the caged bird sing, even when the cat anais black turns away hungry. i listen for the chimes & the drumbeats of other lands, pound ancient flamenco in dirty bare feet on his dirty bare floor, patterning the rhythm of his guitar. i fall into his eyes long before his fingers awaken from their journey. we walked in the orchard in the rain, made love under the blossoming peach trees, bathed one another in the porcelain claw foot tub at the top of the stairs, & slept on clean cotton sheets older than bone memory.

he put the desire album on the turntable, came up behind me, held me backwards as we swayed together close to an epiphany, while the breeze came in through his sheer white curtains like pledges on our skin. yet we know vows sour. we understand that words are simply combinations of a 26-letter alphabet that are merely symbols. we become incomprehensible. we don’t take or give oaths anymore, having seen shattered glass and bleeding ears from the fallout.

once upon a time i was a little princess girl with a flat chest and a round tum who held pap-pap’s hand like it was salvation. i swore i could not live without him but more than a decade after the evil alzheimers claimed him, i let go by telling him to let go. i therapeutically lied to my beloved on his deathbed: i said, i will be fine, close your eyes now. you see, i know that everyone goes. i know that no one is safe. i understand that annie couldn’t control the cancer cells in her ovaries, that daddy couldn’t stop it in his colon, & that aunt mary couldn’t keep it out of her breasts. i know the day that bob went out to mow the grass he didn’t mean to die of a heart attack. i know that jon didn’t want his motorcycle to be hit by a truck & that johnny didn’t want to have that stroke & that nobody really meant to overdose. this list, yes roxy, this list is full of the bones of the people who, like me, were too frail to stay. my nannie didn’t mean to stop breathing and my mother is not trying to grow old. this list is much longer, of course, but i have to stop. fact is, we’re all going to stop soon enough.

i have a grandson i push on the swings at city park now. he laughs breathlessly the way i used to do when he’s high in the air & wonders if i can catch him if he slips. i wonder, also. we feed the ducks & protect our toes from unexpected beaks & i’m not pretending to be happy. i am not pretending. there are moments. not letting go is a habit of mine, like control & chocolate & asking for another chance.