for grandma.

at my grandmother's funeral my grandfather is memorialized

“Lonnie stared the man in the face, took his gun, and broke the gun in half”

pastor tells us

“Lonnie left Margie to go fight the war in the Special Forces Army!”

Pasotr say

“He’s the reason why i’m alive.”

pastor say and the congregation sings praises to Lonnie

who looks up from his front row seat near margie’s casket to the pastor praising him.

and 3,0000 miles away margie’s spirit is collecting her things from youngstown ohio where she raised their five children while he fought a war he didn't veen know how to spell.

held his neck and back when he got home from that war and taught him how to spell it and other  wars like unemployment and alcoholic and racism because he did not know how to spell these, how to make these out when they were right in his face

but she wanted to be a school teacher and was taught how to spell and read by the white man whose daughter she raised and whose daughter she had at 16 after he raped her.

so she taught lonnie how to read things that were hard to make out 

and now 3,000 miles away she is going to be buried by him

but it wont be dirt she is under.

“i met margie after Lonnie wooed her one night with a handful of pebbles thrown at her window pane.”

congregation says “awwww’

while margie has left youngstown and now kisses the front step of every door where they lived 

rolls up her awards from The Washington Post and Ron brown vice president campaign and Channel 50 television station 

and the 15 surgeries she had on her knees

and the nights of pain she quieted everyone from

and the tears collected on her shoulder from him and the little hims she held for 56 of her 71 years

she collects all these things because she would like to bring them with her into the grave

but when she returns to the ceremony

she is being lowered in a casket filled with him: his stories, his medals, his friends, his favorite food, and the alone time he needed,

and the smoke from his tobacco pipe that made her asthmatic

and the times he called her fat and disgusting

and his rum and coke

and his rum and coke

and his rum and coke

until there is no room for the self she has gathered to take with her 

so she places her memoriablila down next to her grave and climbs in

but underneath the casket door, underneath all his things is space, is a black sky, is for her

a galaxy she has never known yet allows her to 

see the earth so clearly

to see his earth more clearly 

and i pray, not to the god the pastor serves, 

who believed margie’s best accomplishment in life was finding him

but i pray to the God within Margie who is Goddess

who knows her ability to gather and build for over seven decades 

makes her ready to be amongst the Gods of the Dark Sky

that are gathering and building another universe that memorializes people like her

before they become flesh, and then when breath enters them, and then when they become breath again.

To this God, i pray from her new galaxy my grandmother 

becomes a school teacher

and burns the white school teacher

and opens up her window in the middle of the night 

and tells the man throwing rocks at her that 

she has not been watching him from her room,

that she has only to come to the window because he distracted her from her work

that this is not a good sign if he wanted to be the love of her life

and that if he wanted to get her attention by first having her come to look down on him

then secretly that would be her purview of him their whole life until she, in death or life, could no longer keep it secret, that he met her having to look up.