It lets me think
My eyes closed or searching the sky for animal figures
Ice cream cones & airplanes that skip across the blue blue up
The aqua water carry my arms & legs
A body of girl & whoosh
When I’m too tired to move my calves & arms
I climb out the water & feel less rubber band
& more light light
Most days the water burns everything
my nose & eyes & even my hair is too dry
but I feel clean
I feel more me than when I arrived
Lay Li meets me after the pool
She ain’t get in the pool but she still wears
her tube top bikini, a towel draped around her shoulder
like a comma.
She bites at her cuticles & I already know
It’s been almost two years since silly boys slapped water in the pool
Now the boys are gone & it’s just me doing floating like a log
while Mommy & Me classes happen in the shallow end
my muscles hurt after playing Horse alone
A girl on the basketball court ain’t no different
than any other baller, if you work hard enough
that’s what my cousin Inga say
She the first one to teach me to hold the globe with both hands
to use my right hand to guide the ball.
Finally out of the pool
I can see the harsh water peels my skin
I don’t have any cocoa butter on me
So I pull my legs up, crisscross-applesauce
& focus on Lay Li.
When she bites her nails it’s not because she’s nervous
More like anxious and angry
& always it’s about her mama
“So what happened?” I ask
& she frowns at her hands
Then covers her face from the dipping sun
She shrugs
& instantly I feel bad
I know what it feels like to have
Too much to say
So much you can’t speak
I make noise when I’m nosy
I slap the mosquitoes gnawing at my legs
It’s been a year since we last talked
about her mama but that’s the only
thing that bothers her enough
to bite-ruin her perfect nails
But Lay Li don’t sweat it
she don’t swing at the mosquitoes
she don’t even miss a beat.
“That woman been gone so long
I can barely remember what she looks like.”
I CAN’T IMAGINE
what it’s like to forget my mother’s face
I sit quiet & wait for her story to unfold
My mama still on drugs
& my daddy ain’t got time for all that
He don’t want us girls to see her like that
He says every child deserve to be the sun
To know they come from the sun
& if the sun snuff itself to dusk before its time
& no shine is left to see
Let it be
One day we woke up & she was already
a cloudy shadow of herself
Then one day we woke up & she was
gone
She only come home when she clean
She only call home when she sorta sober
She ain’t never remembered my birthday
or my sisters’ birthday & I’m like whatever.
When you live where we live
You say what it is & if you can’t say what it is
Or if it hurt too much
Or maybe it’s too confusing
You just say “whatever.”
That way you ain’t no lie
DON’T NOBODY WANT TO CALL IT
Especially when it got more faces than any solitary name
but if I’m honest
I want to know if Lay Li seen the zombies too
The ones who take over my uncles’ bodies
after weeks of playing ghost
only to return him to our front door
with his clothes all crumpled
& eyes brimming red
Lay Li is the only one I can talk to about
The smell of hot ash & burned glass
“You know what it looks like.”
She stands up from the grass
swinging her dry striped towel in the air
“It looks like the walking dead.”
ON THE WAY TO MY HOUSE
I need to rinse the chlorine off my skin
I need to remember who I am
Lay Li say, “Where’s your cocoa butter?”
& I know she wants to call me ashy.
When I walk through the front door
I’m surprised no one is home
I turn on the television & tell Lay Li I’ll be right back
Right out the blue Lay Li calls to me already running up the stairs
“I’m just tired of crying
over someone
that’s been gone so long.”
LAY LI LAUGHS
like the joke’s on everybody but her
Lay Li
squints into the mirror & pouts
Lay Li
applies more lipstick than a little
Lay Li
takes my lip gloss as backup just in case
Lay Li say
“It’s so boring here. Let’s call Shawn.”