by Maya Williams
Hello again, love.
I’m trying to love and appreciate
you better.
How hard it is to love you
when you remind me
of the ways the living
and the dead
won’t come back to me.
These days,
it’s been harder
for my nervous system
remembering the living
more than the dead.
I have come
to accept the recent dead
unable to return.
I’m trying to hold on
to one more grandmother
while she’s here,
and I don’t know
if I’m doing a great job.
I’m trying to ask
loved ones for what I need
because I can’t rely
on that one person
anymore.
My fingernails press into
my palms to keep
me present.
My palms
have multiple grins
at my ineffectiveness.
Telling people you
made me a better writer
helps me believe
my trauma is not the teaching artist
I need.
I don’t enjoy conversing with you
all the time, but moments like these
help me be more receptive
when it happens again and again.
I apologize for the times
spiritual bypassing
made me ignore you.
I apologize
for the Biblical David moments.
Me screaming
into voids unwilling to shout back.
I’m always trying
to love you better.
It’s hard not to blame you
when illness, systems,
substances, suicide,
circumstance
take my loved ones away.
My best friend once
compared a colonized heaven
to a shitty retirement home.
How long has heaven been
weaponized by people
weaponizing you?
I wish you could control
that narrative, but I know
you can’t.
Life has been compared
to plays and extensive
tv series.
You’re often a bystander
in the writing process.
I don’t mean that
as an insult,
surprisingly.
We have to be
the ones to let you
intervene,
I know.
I have to be
the one to let you
intervene,
I know.
The landing of
anticipating you
never lands well.
But there is a landing
spot for you in my chest
every time.
Death doesn’t discriminate,
but the living who force it
upon marginalized people do.
The living who force it
upon my people do.
What is a pilgrimage
but for those
who seek safe haven
with their dead?
Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who served as Portland, Maine’s poet laureate for a 2021-2024 term. Maya has also contributed prose to venues such as Black Youth Project, LGBTQ Nation, The Rumpus, Black Girl Nerds, TalkDeath, MetroUK, and more. Follow more of eir work at mayawilliamspoet.com
