I expected death to ride the waves of the elder generation like a message in a bottle.
To no avail,  sailing their calm and stormy waters,
never breaking and never letting any liquid inside,
simply pushed and pulled along looking aimless but always landing exactly where it should be.   Then the birthing.
A divine replenishing or a systematic reincarnation.
Not of the soul but the spirit
and the gifts and often times the furl of a smile or a wrinkled up laughter.
This was possibly God’s way of keeping His promise.
He was born way after he was wanted but right before the bottle had landed.
By now,  my mother was her own creation and no longer afraid of her masculinity.
She was built with one cup of sugar, two pounds of floor and some steel.
A little black box if you will, she was the surviving type.
My father was not worth the expenditures of the time she spent to visit him in jail or buy him bottles to cater to what was the calm after the storm.
She raised her children first class.
Concrete walls were the finest fortress she could build and some of us,  the three who survived were born equipped.
The legacy that was left was only a remnant of what she planned to build.
The four walls were all so temporary not because we wanted four more but because we prefered life without them.
Living off skill but surving from will
We tied cords around each other.
My brother was both my father and my body guard though never simultaneously and never where I could see.
We broke the back of a generational curse but created our own.
Mama simply said,  dont get pregnant before 21 and don’t drop out.
She never said don’t drunk, don’t sell drugs, don’t sell self.
None of us were built for dying.
So I drank.
Bottles were my boos and I often woke up unlike how I went to sleep.
The others have been dead or dying.

My brother,  his spine is strong, supports the weight of the waiting.
I often wonder how he entertains himself beside people who are dying.
Dialysis doesn’t seem that bad.
Diabetes is just for needing to eat healthier,  your kidneys failing?
You don’t need those, how much did he drink? My 21yr old brother started living the day they told him he would die.
When asked why he didn’t wait for me before decorating the Christmas tree, he flash those pretty brown eyes that I was always so jealous of,  smiled, said he felt strong enough to do it.
My jealously wasn’t in that his short comings always felt excused but his triumphs, those were emmaculate.
And I never make excuses for him.
He  knows where we are.
He’s created a religion within his walls.
Where unlike here, excellence is not how well you do things but how passionately you live them.
I remember crying,  asking God why Isaiah. Isaiahs brain didn’t work like everyone else,  Isaiah needed a kidney, Isaiah needs two
. And now,  now Isaiah can’t hear.
The drummer boys got robotics in his ear.
So I try not to complain about the hurting.
I’m not depressed there’s just this aching in my chest. I think she’s broken.

I expected death to ride the waves of my generation.
Like a message in a bottle, to no avail, looking aimlessly but landing exactly where it should. And none of us were built for dying.

Isaiah 30: 8 For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as he hears it, he answers you. 20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. 21 And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,”

I suppose I approve of what I’ve written -Paisley