The Day Her Body Went Mute
By Aloysius S Harmon Jr
& death swallowed my grandmother when i was twelve.
there are some memories that hunt you while asleep
& some spill goosebumps on the fabric of your skin.
i lost count of the nights i poured tears out my eyes,
there were days i I kept my fingers steady in the family gallery.
i listened to your voice breaking through the cracked walls,
you lit candles & placed them in the middle of your room,
& then drag silence in your chest &
spoke in tongues and screamed at God to keep me safe.
when my scars developed into a city,
with dimmed lights & wrecked lanes,
you ironed smiles on your lips and still kissed me on the forehead.
how do i tell these stories of how your body spent days wearing off its
texture from rotten scars?
the dark rooms here still hold your photograph,
the piano in the parlor eats dust
it must have thought about you & felt bored, too.
BIO:
Aloysius S Harmon Jr is an emerging Grebo Liberian writer and poet. Many of his poems have appeared on Eboquills, Eve Poetry Magazine, We Write Liberia, Synchronized Chaos, and elsewhere. He is one of the contributors to the 'Breaking the Silence Anthology' and 'Weep No More Liberia'. He is a student of the Mother Patern College of Health Sciences, Stella Maris Polytechnic University, where he studies Biology as a major and Chemistry as, minor.
& death swallowed my grandmother when i was twelve.
there are some memories that hunt you while asleep
& some spill goosebumps on the fabric of your skin.
i lost count of the nights i poured tears out my eyes,
there were days i I kept my fingers steady in the family gallery.
i listened to your voice breaking through the cracked walls,
you lit candles & placed them in the middle of your room,
& then drag silence in your chest &
spoke in tongues and screamed at God to keep me safe.
when my scars developed into a city,
with dimmed lights & wrecked lanes,
you ironed smiles on your lips and still kissed me on the forehead.
how do i tell these stories of how your body spent days wearing off its
texture from rotten scars?
the dark rooms here still hold your photograph,
the piano in the parlor eats dust
it must have thought about you & felt bored, too.
BIO:
Aloysius S Harmon Jr is an emerging Grebo Liberian writer and poet. Many of his poems have appeared on Eboquills, Eve Poetry Magazine, We Write Liberia, Synchronized Chaos, and elsewhere. He is one of the contributors to the 'Breaking the Silence Anthology' and 'Weep No More Liberia'. He is a student of the Mother Patern College of Health Sciences, Stella Maris Polytechnic University, where he studies Biology as a major and Chemistry as, minor.
