Your story is in the big things... that your mom gave her all to raise you right (thank you mama) or that your dad was there for everyone when Katrina took everything (thank you dad). You remember your lady buying you a guitar because you said you wanted to learn it (thank you love). Your oldest friend flew out to check on you because your sister said she was worried about your spirit (thank you Yan and thank you Nuc). These are some of the big things that make my story.
Yet it is the little things that make a life.
By the time you turn 40, past moments are more than just memories. They are treasures and landmarks. As years become decades, we tend to think in large swaths of occurrence. This was the decade I lost my parents. This was the decade my children were born. This was the decade I became a man.
Yet, even after many years of turns and returns, the details of experience are the inexhaustible source of perspective. Life takes flesh in a pointed finger, a hand over a piano, an arm over a shoulder on a ride to the country.
The big things make a life story. But it is the little things that prove a life was lived.
Here are a couple of real life little things, memories that become stanzas in my upcoming story, Mass Transit Muse, an epic poem about a city bus ride home.
A Reading from Mass Transit Muse, Chapter Two
I turned to the window
and saw my reflection.
Outside the world whirled
by.
I spent a minute spinning in that
vision
till another caught my eye.
A young woman stood
at the corner
of Tricou and Tupelo
rubbing her budding belly in slow circles,
her fingertips sunk lightly into
her blouse.
She touched the baby in her womb
and brought her fingers to her
mouth.
She kissed them,
and stared off into thoughts in
the distance.
The sun trickled through the oaks
to patter the instance
a soft yellow.
Saint R(i)TA paused… knelt, and
exhaled.
The young woman climbed in and
took a seat.
A short line of travelers
followed, closely.
I watched her settle her body,
then slowly waded into her story.
Saint Rita moaned and whined like
a whale,
humming with oceans of affection,
loud as a gale.
The girl was moved.
Swaying side to side,
she held the slight rise of her
womb with one hand.
In her other,
a silver wind-up toy chimed
softly—
a lullaby for her baby.
She fingered the toy and pulled
her belly near.
She wound the toy and held it to
her ear,
and to a tune like Danny Boy
and in a tone so clear,
she hummed along as I listened.
My eyes fell closed.
The dark lit a memory.
A young boy walks with a hurried
limp,
a cut on his face bleeds.
He stops and squats to pick
amaranth weeds
from the neutral ground on Mirabeau
Street.
It was me,
as a child,
after a fist-fight with a bigger
boy,
going home to take mine like a
man.
I watched my inner child and
empathized.
Nothing hits harder than mama’s
hands.
I remember Mama’s hands
as they hang over Great Granny’s
piano.
She senses my doubt,
that I don’t trust she will live,
that I won’t go back to finish
college.
Her eyes are lit
like she knows she can prove,
by playing Eyes on the Sparrow,
that she is making it through
the cancer eating her to the
marrow.
And she is right
to fight the pain and sit up
straight.
But I know she will die
no matter what she can play.
In that moment,
I refuse to cry,
in the face of her faith,
her dignity,
her pride.
I focus on her hands
and what they say about her life.
Her veins swell like dunes
under the stitching of her flesh,
sewn together into living mesh
by the women who fed her
and the children she kept
and the palms she prayed through
and the songs she wept.
Her hands steady seasons,
sway a breezy sachet
when she swings spring struts
on days by the lake.
They hold a flowered sun dress,
wave us, to tumble down the levee.
They sit us in the sink
and scrub the itch from our
bodies.
They sandal her feet to tired
legs.
They braid summer struggle hard
on her head.
Tears wet them as they steer us
slowly to the country,
drive us to cousin Jean
while her trouble goes on.
I remember one hungry winter
morning
I’m waiting for the bus
taking pretend puffs
from a transfer I had rolled up
to look like a joint.
Mama rolls up
her trigger finger locked into a
point
and stiff with dismay.
“Come here boy, now,”
it says.
I walk over, slow,
and lean into her window.
She steals my cheek for a kiss,
then passes me a teacup
filled up with warm grits.
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