Manman

My birth

brought your death

your blood

a lavalas

in rainy season.

Papa buried the placenta

with orange seeds

and watered them

with tears.

Papa told me

you were a Mother Tree

and your great-grandmother

was a princess,

from the first people

who named us

Ayiti,

the Land of Mountains.

She fell in love with a mawon,

a runaway who hid in caves

and climbed mountains

to freedom,

then returned with his princess

to fight the French.

Papa does his best

to hide

the ashes

in his heart.

He makes tables, chairs,

cedar coffins

to sell in his shop.

Your older sister, Tante Lila,

never married.

She moved in with us.

When she braids my hair

it’s always too tight.

The dresses she sews

hang loose on my body,

as thin as a gazelle.

Whatever she cooks

always needs salt.

Not like Cousin Phebus,

whose food

makes our tongues dance.

Tante Lila prays the rosary

every day,

scolds me

when I climb

my favorite mapou,

the sacred tree.

So I keep

our secret.

How in the forest

when I touch the trees—

barks grainy, knotted,

or peeled slick smooth—

I see shapes in the wood

calling me to carve them.

I feel the heartbeat of their roots

pulse through my bare feet.

The trees sing to me.

Inside each one

of them

a tiny spark

of

you.