For the Mothers

Dear Sister,

I hear you say, “Every time a Black boy is slain, I mourn as if he were my own.” 

 

Dear Sister,

I sit with you. 

 

Dear Sister,

I hear your weeping and 

the groaning of an agony too complex for words. 

I sit with you.

 

Dear Sister,

Please spill your anger here. 

I remove my hideous antiques 

and smash the fragile things in this house 

clogging the flow of your healing. 

I sit with you.

 

Dear Sister

Please take this cup of tea,

and soothe your throat 

while your pain roars out.  

I sit with you.

 

Dear Sister,

Please talk of your beautiful baby boy?

How every morning when you kissed your grown baby’s cheek, 

you marveled at God for His wonderful works. 

How even as a big boy, his little boy smile peeked through. 

How that little boy 

when he got on your nerve, 

and you yelled, 

he’d toddle over

snuggle your arm and say 

I love you mommy. 

How that little boy smile 

poured over your frustrations 

like a cool glass of iced tea. 

And his sweetness 

baptized your heart 

again and again, 

and even now.  

 

Dear Sister, 

You are so tired. 

May I tuck you in, 

pull the covers over your shoulders, 

And sit with you here?

 

Please rest a while my Sister. 

Let me crouch down beside you, 

as you lower your ancient burden onto my shoulders.

. 

Let it fuse into my bone

because we are bone of each other’s bone

and flesh of each other’s flesh.

 

Let me pray and fight with you,

As you rest a while here.