Angel Dye

Angel Dye
 
Remains
 
My stock knows breaking
They’ve mastered fractures and bends
They duct tape old wounds
 
Our blood is muddy
No one talks about the shame
or all of the names
Memory splits our flesh wide
Repression seals it half-closed
 
Each year I learn this is not legacy
Beyond dysfunction, these curses pierce deep
Past skin, muscle, tissue to fantasy
Our limbs are as strong as the truths we keep
Brittle, broken things carrying too much
Weight shifts at least once a generation
Grabbing clouds, booze, and lovers for a crutch
 
We know blood less than courts or probation
Careful secrets but trembling hands and souls
Break ties, break bread, break even, and break up
Hammer heads and hammer hearts like they’re stones
Super glue the cracks; more space to take up
Reunions happen like healing—seldom
Don’t know ancestors, so we can’t fail them
 
Buried way down in our common psyche
There is a desire for progress somewhere
But lucid thought escapes the split skull
We end up debris and sutures again
Mama’s mixup and mess, Papa’s stumble-upon
Welfare card’s whore and not our own
Broke down city houses broke down us
 
We’ve remained here years
The decades have grown weary
Bones we’ve borne wither
 
My stock knows breaking
Can fix a car, fix a plate
But still can’t fix us
 
 
 
Angel Dye is a senior at Howard University studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing and a minor in Theater Arts. Angel has published two chapbooks plus compiled and edited an anthology entitled Love Letters to Our Daughters: A Collection of Womanly Affirmations. She is passionate about poetry and fine arts in all forms and plans to eventually found a non-profit after school conservatory for at-risk K-12 students who wish to cultivate gifts in the arts. For more about Angel’s publications visit EdenWorksPublishing.