Staceyann Chin

Two Hours Till my 31st...

The Birthday looms large. And for the first time in years I am awaiting it alone. It is good. This alone-ness.

The view here is better without the yen for some woman or other blocking my line of vision.

31 years ago I suspect I was alone
contemplating

the craze of a life
destined to follow strange paths

the world is quiet
these hours before the well-
wishing

the polite gratitude
for the phonecalls

the pretense of family
and all being well

if only for this moment
my mother
remembers

I hope

my bloody entry
into the life she did not want

what a sacrifice
it must have been to bear

the bundle unwanted

I fancy myself
a Christ

Black
lesbian

coming before anyone expected me

missed my intended zodiac
by two months
and two weeks

what a thing
the child unloved

is committed to telling the tale
of how city after city meets under her breath

and Ani
is writing again

her own voice ascending
the wild ladder
of finding
the self buried under all those pictures
people take of her

I never like the pictures
true as they might be

it is me
who stands/sits
grins/frowns

pensive bitch
leaning away from the camera

in my 32nd year of survival

I am grateful for the parallax
the hint of what else it could be

that sees me
reaching for more
every year we wish for more than we had

less of the things we did not want

we always want more
or less

what we accomplished yesterday pales
in the fluorescent glare of tomorrow

and all is tenuous
all is miniscule

nothing of value
is visible

only the inadequacies
the shortcoming of milestones

carved out of imposssible

my best friend spends her birthday
alone

every year
she considers

weighs the length of her year
against the one before

so I await here
practising

the art of being alone
with one year ahead

one behind me

each cluster of days/weeks/months
posing questions
yet to be anwsered

low words queried in this quiet dark
barking
failures and triumphs alike

and all of this wrapped into Christmas cards
and gifts sent in the mail

spread out on my wooden floors
the new lamps
unfamiliar

the rainbow cushions fumbled into a kind of constructed disorder

my mother will hear from me tomorrow
always
I am of two minds
around this woman who left me so she would not die

there in the carnival
of poverty
and discontent

if she were not my mother
I would call her feminist

raise issues
of how brave she was for walking
away from tradition

but I will call her

and make small bits of laughter
with my sister

and the year will pass
peaceful

for now
I am here

swiveling round these notes I am sending to you
thank you for reading

for writing your own stories
for letting me read them sometimes

here's to another bloody
year of picking at myself

and finding the flesh
rotting in places

muscled in others
always I am human

and erring
barely surviving

but cheers to all the drinkers
the clinkers of wine glasses

may the Christ child bring more than you need
may Kwaanza
be all you envisioned

whatever the occasion
or lack of it
thereof

when you go under this season
may there be more than enough breath

for those you love to come up face for air

Peace
and all that Jazz,
Staceyann

Posted by staceyann at December 24, 2003 10:49 PM