ode to who i will be

let me be the palpable love-tension
stringing our eyes together
like a kite
attached to a finger,
tenuous but trusted

as I sit on an unthrone
and you burn
all your love into me,
my palm, our hearts,
nervous pumping.

let me be as pure and exotic
as the powder blue dust sky,
a blanket over the poverty
that still has
the vitality to sing,
and to sing all night
with primal screams
and lugubrious beats
that mirror the acid energy
of the fires they burn.

let me be warm and wet
like the back
of my cotton T-shirt,
a relic of grade school,
when I could never have envisioned
a kind of keening
so deep and so raw,
nor a sister so sincere
as to cry into it,
only because
its wearer is too.

but most of all,
let me be as selfless
as the wrinkled angel of Poland,
generous grandmother
bestowing gift
upon gift, until,
dying and spent,
the most she could offer us
was a mint
and a tissue
we later used at her funeral—
those items,
and her watery love gaze,
her last gifts given.