The creased polaroid photo my
grandmother keeps in her wallet
by Kota Locklear
“Let me pay,” my Grandmother whispered,
flipping open her wallet
Inside the pocket was a weathered photo
of me and my sister sitting in
Her garden
Dripping with childhood
and bitter with truth
My father’s home had always been
far from me, impossible
charred mistake of a building
The dwelling had consequences:
a school bag crawling with roaches,
a hungry stomach and an infested
pantry. A broken promise.
Walls painted with black ash
and adorned with smothered beer cans
condemned years ago but never
Truly killed
blocked off from the children
who should have been raised there
looking back, I realize,
My father wouldn't let me see his mistakes.
and so, my sister and I were raised by my
grandmother.
On the day I was born my grandmother
planted
A poem in the ground that grew
and sprouted lemons
and at seven I would spit the seeds
into the sink where my grandfather skinned
fish
and at nine I would take a fistfull of it’s
bushy green
leaves and mix them into hosewater, to
make soup for my dolls
And at eleven I would pet the shaggy old
dog that laid
in the tree’s sweet lemony shade
And at fourteen I cried as my father clawed
at the dirt
and pulled up the roots
and split the trunk of the sour dying tree
infested with tiny green bugs
And so, I wonder what I truly lost
behind those cracking locked doors?
Younger,
on a starless
Night in my grandmother’s garden
I sit for a while with my sister
with the terrace of sweet jasmine
above a swinging bench
Waiting for my dad to visit
Through the rosy shadows,
my sister’s face
is illuminated
by White
Flashing
Blinding
Light. Smile, my grandfather demanded,
Snap,
Childhood in a photograph
cemented in time was the moment
Where roaches writhe behind locked doors
and boxed wine rotted
as the wind blows
White blossoms into our hair