a fire like you Read online

  Also by Upile Chisala

  soft magic

  nectar

  For Sakhe.

  Your love is the kindest of creatures.

  CONTENTS

  Wound

  Hunger

  Swoon

  Sister

  A Note on the Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Wound

  -

  And if you let it,

  fear will gladly tell your story.

  As Black as Tax

  Here,

  We were never once children.

  Here, our mothers, like Mary, birthed saviors.

  Our only purpose is to redeem.

  Month-end is for working miracles, little black Jesuses.

  “Let there be light and water, rent and bread.”

  Caring Pains

  Here,

  To be woman is to care hard,

  Care until it kills you.

  Inheritance #1

  I can’t decide whether it was borrowed or a thing of the blood.

  Wherever I got it from then,

  I am choosing not to claim it now.

  Gogo

  I guess your heart needed the rest after a whole life of holding everyone in it.

  Swim Class

  You cannot dive into their

  mouths and fish out a “sorry”;

  it’s never worked that way.

  And what good is a “sorry” you had to drown for?

  You Are Not a Mender of Men

  I want to break the messiah in you.

  Not everyone is yours to save.

  Inheritance #2

  Listen,

  Someone has to listen to the “Go”

  And the “Run”

  And the “Don’t look back”

  And have the stomach to leave like your father,

  Even if just this once.

  You can be that someone, the someone who makes joy on new ground.

  Sometimes

  I walk in, hurt from the day.

  How much tired is in black living?

  I want light bones and lots of money.

  I want it easier.

  I want it white with little sorry.

  Equal Parts Nothing and Everything

  You hurt best,

  And I wish you’d stay gone the longest.

  It’s not the blood or the bone or the good years;

  I think I just love you cause I can.

  Cause it comes easier than hating you

  And hurts less.

  “When Will You Go Back?”

  What if

  “Back” is a story you want to spit out?

  “Back” is your grandmother’s body in the ground?

  “Back” is a heavy heart?

  “Back” is always a hungry pocket?

  “Back” is where your dreams give up on you?

  Familiar

  Something as brutal as you,

  As fist-like and unaware,

  With a cruel history, in the bone

  And in the mouth,

  With little prospect of peace,

  Always on the wrong side,

  Something as brutal as you walks in, and I embrace it.

  I embrace it knowingly.

  It Ended as Sourly as It Did Because

  We were two bruised things

  Behaving poorly.

  Always going wound for wound

  And troubled father for troubled father.

  Dredging up dirt and trauma.

  Nothing was sacred, everything was a weapon,

  No one was safe.

  This is the damage dance.

  Fire still can’t be put out with gasoline.

  Love and violence have never been friends.

  -

  Right in the meat of our love I knew it,

  I knew it like my palm,

  This would be a story filled with bones.

  Match

  In some homes,

  Like ours,

  Both the betrayal and the forgiveness

  Were ruthless and constant

  And undeserved.

  Waiting Bodies. Weighty Bodies.

  Every time I mean to write about my body, I laugh.

  How can someone be so un-in-love with this luscious, overflowing

  Concoction of thigh

  And dark, desirable things?

  How can that someone be me?

  How dare I!

  How I look in the mirror and grieve!

  How do I wake up in hate?

  And will I ever get tired of trying to make small

  of my heavy,

  To make light of my darkness,

  To see beauty where I see ugly?

  Someone said they would die for a body like this.

  Well, someone is dying to leave this body,

  No, someone is dying to love this body again.

  A Father Is a Something

  Dad,

  I won’t carry your fate forward.

  I’ll show up in celebration of everyone who celebrates me.

  I will be the one promise you will never break.

  Abbreviation

  We learned it when we were younger,

  There are things you mustn’t ask.

  There are uncles who go thin,

  And stop laughing,

  And disappear.

  And there are aunts who are left behind to take

  the pills,

  And stay alive,

  And pay the rent,

  And never speak ill.

  We learned it when we were younger,

  Some things hurt and hurt again.

  -

  1.You didn’t break God’s heart.

  2.We can’t always spot the wolves.

  3.Even people you love can be beasts.

  4.Even beds can be hell.

  5.Even our bodies can feel like foreign countries.

  Countries we never wanted to visit. Countries

  that are on fire. Countries we want to run from.

  Countries that will never love us back.

  6.You didn’t break God’s heart.

  7.Don’t blame yourself for their bite.

  8.You didn’t know you were walking into a mouth.

  9.Even people you love can be beasts.

  The Thing About Souls

  You are gone in so many ways,

  But here in new ones.

  You have us by the heart;

  We’ll always be yours, and you’ll always be ours.

  Part Prayer, Part Plea

  Is being someone’s daughter sure punishment?

  Will I spend my whole life begging for permission to breathe?

  A Mercy

  I want to be as careful with my words as I can. Because I am the kind to run into my mouth and say things less lovely than I meant them. Regret it, regret it in the belly. Here is my offering, ugly and sharp but true.

  It always felt good, but it never felt right. And endings can be remarkable things if we let them.

  What Was Lost

  Losing will always feel fresh

  And under-grieved.

  You were the sister I chose.

  And I was your willing disciple.

  Somewhere,

  A nightclub remembers us dancing.

  There, our friendship

  Is still breathing.

  A Few Things You May Reconsid
er

  1.That knife of a mouth.

  2.A liking for the bottle, if it comes with a disliking for yourself.

  3.Hiding hot anger under thick laughter.

  4.Talking yourself out of joy more times than into it.

  Sold Out

  “Trust me, you’ll regret it,” they say.

  Trust me,

  if my father had even one “sorry” to offer,

  I’d buy out the front row and listen.

  -

  Home for you was always hard.

  Someone was always raising their voice,

  The other was always wanting out.

  So much running under one roof.

  So much longing in a single space.

  Addendum

  All we learned,

  we the children they supposedly stayed for,

  was that misery was home and right and ours.

  Softness Is a Gift in Worlds and Homes

  as Hard as These Ones

  Your mother has kind eyes,

  Is sorry she said those things you know she’ll say again tomorrow,

  Wishes you weren’t so set on being so soft and breakable,

  Wants you to take her abuse with a smile.

  Small Violences and Other Lies

  Because you say it with the sweetest parts of you,

  In the sweetest voice,

  Out of the sweetest mouth,

  I am honeyed by it.

  And fall into it.

  And crawl under it.

  Suddenly, I am the sorry one

  And you are the savior.

  And all your cruel things are gone and forgotten.

  This is a violence.

  You tell me I live in a panic

  That my favorite houses are the ones that shake.

  That I wouldn’t know love if it called me by

  my name.

  This is how you like to cut me down and call me twisted.

  This is how you forget you are the danger.

  This a violence too.

  The art of turning someone against themselves.

  The art of making someone small.

  The art of tearing a pride limb from limb.

  The art of having the last word, the word that matters, the word that holds water.

  This is a violence,

  and in love there is no small violence

  and no rug to

  sweep it under.

  -

  I haven’t quite figured out what the loneliness is meant to teach me, especially when it crawls into rooms I’ve filled with people.

  Borders

  These lines drawn crooked

  draw blood so neatly.

  -

  I miss you in a very real way

  But I’m far too proud

  And tired

  And angry

  To rebuild that bridge.

  Martyr/Mother/Magician

  Your mother,

  like mine,

  lives in between mourning and rejoicing.

  Took whatever joy offered, however little,

  and promised to make love out of it.

  But you,

  and I,

  and even she

  can learn the way out of any love that requires

  our smallness.

  -

  You can give and give and come out the other end tired and longing.

  -

  You should know,

  burning is not the only way to come to poetry.

  You don’t have to pry open a wound to have a story worth telling.

  -

  I have been grieving a lot of things that needed to die in me.

  Hunger

  Please Note

  The very first step is believing you deserve joy.

  All That Grew

  There is a long list of things I wish this life had or hadn’t given me,

  But now that I am here, having lived with and without,

  I know life was only preparing me for myself

  and I was worth the wait.

  Gently

  Darling,

  There’s so much life in this place,

  everything is begging you to breathe.

  -

  1.Are you ungrateful for wanting your forgiveness to look nothing like your mother’s?

  No

  2.You were taught that men are gods

  That God is a man

  That God is your father

  That your father is God.

  3.In your story, “home” and “wound” are synonymous Just like “mother” and “worshipper.”

  4.And what kind of love grows from a wound?

  5.Are you ungrateful if you celebrate the day

  you left home,

  I mean wound, I mean mother,

  worshipper, father, and God?

  No

  6.Growing up where you did and how you did

  You know good and well

  That staying is only half of the story.

  It may kick you in the pride every time.

  But the work of keeping a love warm and

  living is always worth it.

  There Isn’t a Fire Around Like You

  Because you have it

  —Time—

  and having it is a blessing,

  spend some of it

  learning how not to be afraid of yourself.

  -

  Saying it isn’t far from living it

  Of course, only

  if you believe in that kind of thing

  Your mouth or your magic

  Your magic or your mouth.

  Grace

  You’ve got to make right with your story.

  None of this half living and hot anger.

  None of this leaving yourself and falling into people.

  None of this staying cause their warmth comes with little work.

  None of this settling for smallness.

  You’ve got to make right with your story,

  So you can be a home to yourself.

  Because no one can give you as good a life

  as you can.

  It Will Serve You Most

  While you’re at it,

  Learn accountability.

  Learn it well.

  Even with kind intentions, you too could be the beast in a story.

  -

  Your witchery is knowing you’re yours,

  when all your training has taught you to be someone else’s.

  -

  If it is all burning and misery ahead,

  I hope the version of myself that is tired of rising from the ashes in the end

  Shows up and keeps me from dancing into the fire to begin with.

  -

  You were taught to work miracles for everyone

  but yourself.

  A messiah to others but barely a friend of your own.

  These, darling, are things you must undo before you become undone.

  -

  A list of things you’ve braved lately:

  Bills that linger.

  Silence that cuts.

  Mothers who lug around pain.

  Gods who don’t show up.

  The dead who aren’t getting any rest.

  Brothers who sink into their father’s habits.

  Fathers who aren’t sorry.

  Lovers who make doors out of your tiniest flaws and walk out with parts of you.

  But, darling, remember healing never forgets to come to soften the day.

  These are things you will survive.

  -

  It will go how it will go;

  Either way, I will arm myself with
gladness.

  Ready

  Now that you’ve chosen peace, prepare for it.

  Make yourself a home for the healing.

  Half of the work is readying your heart.

  So when joy walks in, you know it’s yours

  and that you deserve it.

  -

  Darling,

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning.

  There is no shame in a fresh beginning, only grace and gratitude.

  Find a Quiet Place to Practice

  Some people don’t sit with themselves long enough to learn to love from the inside out.

  -

  I hope the thrill of leaving yourself wears off

  Soon and completely.

  Because when it comes to it, when it comes

  Right down to it, you’re the one you need.

  Once the Water Goes

  This life will push you, my darling.

  So you’ll have to learn

  First to cry for crying’s sake.

  And then get up and push it back.

  -

  You are working on having the backbone for this life;

  every joy you conjure is a blessing,

  every part of you that wants another day is golden.

  You are worth the care and celebration.

  Some Truths Are Just as Persistent Tomorrow

  The wine is as makeshift a solution as the lover.

  If you want a story that doesn’t reek of regret,

  you’ll have to crawl out of your old ways and learn to be honest.

  -

  Darling,