Recorded by the author at The Mark Twain House & Museum, July 26, 2024
As you open your eyes, you are met with the sweet,
yet unmistakable scent of plantains being fried to a crisp.
An indication of your lengthy Caribbean heritage.
You want to get up to follow the smell, but your biggest
8-year-old selves’ fear is in the way—a SPIDER.
You think to yourself,
Why are there so many in this world?
You get up to face your fear, remembering what she told you.
“Dem a nature beings, no chubble dem mi pickney.”
(They are nature beings, don’t bother them my child)
You take a literal leap of faith, over your fear gracefully.
Then, you are met with dark wood—lots of it.
An indicator of her nearing decline; a tragic demise.
But it was not—not yet. She needed to hold on.
As you run your small 8-year-old finger over
the wood, her face enters; she is your grandma,
and you are at grandma’s house.
But before you can acknowledge her frail appearance,
you are met with the sound of the dark brown rocking
chair that needs oil. It’s her favorite chair.
Well, it was; you don’t see her anymore because
people get older and grow apart.
As she rocks back and forth, humming the songs in her
hymnal, you analyze her from head to toe. Noticing how she
is 77 with only a couple strands of gray hair. Her signs of age
show the most in her face, yet she is still beautiful.
How she still licks her finger to turn a page.
You wish you could return, return to the sweet,
yet unidentifiable smells. The many fears
that lived in that one house. The signs of aging,
and so much more. But you cannot.
It is now all
a memory.
It is
no longer a feeling.