Bagette Street

I want to walk down Bagette Street,

to feel my feet on the solid ground

that witnessed my mothers first wail of I Am,

a screaming uninvited guest

who made her appearance long after my Grandmother

had ceased to entertain any wish

to suckle or nurture another hungry infant.

I want to go to Baggette Street

to sit on the sagging stoop, warped from the weight of our history,

and listen for the faint whisper of a child...

Do the creaking boards hold memories of her laughter?

Did she ever shriek with unadulterated glee?

I know she wept a seeping spillage of tears

from a morterd well of sorrow

that never new a drought year, never dried up or emptied

no matter her wailing and her weeping.

I can see firey curls poking wildly above the porch rail,

as she pranced on the floor boards of her lonliness...

With dead bodies sharing space between handcrafted furniture

in the bowels of the basement

under her running and playing.

Her Father, the first mortician in the county to embalm,

drained blood from the lifeless and replaced it with liquids of preservation.

The same fingers that crafted wood and word.

He was a little Banty Rooster, his poetry and whimsy

published regularly in the town crier...

His furniture holding up the hundred years required to be an antique.

And he beat the ginger child for a violin lie

and a tween truth;

balanced on the boundaries of her innocense.

She gave up the violin and never trusted love again...

I want to go to Baggette Street;

birthplace of the womb

whose only living fruit

Is me.