How I learned to hold grief at such a young age
Because my mama lost her daddy when she was too young
And she didn’t know how to hold her grief so she let it break
Like waves against the inside of her skin until it was all worn
Down trying to hold her together and she only wanted
My baby older sister to remember grandpa as a happy man,
A man who stuck out his bum playing basketball, who told
Jokes so bad my Navajo grandma would scold him, and kiss him
and make him coffee in that blue kettle their old house
still has somewhere, maybe under the cabinets, or behind
that old flour tin that had maggots one year when my mom
was helping her mom, my scary Navajo grandma, clean it out
and they managed by some Navajo miracle to keep the spam
& eggs from burning on the stove the entire time & I remember too
how my grandmother had a picture of her husband up
until the day she died and even now it’s still there in that house
& how my mother has learned to say hello to the photographs
and clear the gardens every few weeks, and lick her wounds
and somehow make sure we’re never too sad about it,
don’t ever be sad, because they were good people,
great people, in fact, and they never would have said that
sort of thing out loud while they lived, and that is important
to remember because that is exactly the kind of good
that they were, that we were from since the very
beginning
