I cannot let go

I cannot let go, you tell me
pointing at the photographs
behind where you spend your time
head first in the notes,
I cannot let go, you tell me
of the ghost that was her,
my mother who died in an accident
twenty years ago

Pumpkins carvings

Tastes like a potato
this pumpkin
carved with a strong arm

an iron fist
that knows how to manage
a kitchen and three children

a nightmare of hallucination

There's a jaguar that follows your son
into a mouse hole, same available in cartoon
but you are real, flesh and blood in my arms

there's a daughter holding a teddy bear
crying about unborn children
yet she's unmarried

there's you, Kohl filled eyes
brown like pine cones
caressed and written for, for years

there's a moment of fear and love
wrapped like a blanket at once
like it's a thing we cannot deny

existing in the midst of all unexplained
switches, trees swishing over in seconds
transported into another space

that has no bitterness
you are real, flesh and blood in my arms
the jaguar gallops
your son goes into the mouse hole and wildly I wake up.

Amina, a girl

You look like what my grandmother 

would have looked like, small and contained 
like a shipment box on a rickety boat
aren't we tired yet of talking about the sea?

maybe we are but we are still unable 
to find dry land, because drier lands breed 
no future, just bucket-loads of dust 
that piles to become make-shift houses 

scary, isn't it? These thoughts coming from everywhere
and nowhere. From a lack of sleep 
that characterizes itself in heavy eyelids 
matching creativity

Amina, the name is a story
like my grandmothers' 
to keep you awake
a child gets reaped

by will or by war
this is a story that births itself 
in my water-filled lungs 
everyday

observations of a young new mother

Wavy wintertime

his little hair creates

a break in the rain that’s falling

before the chocolate is consumed

by his little milky teeth

of your flesh

You speak of sons the way you speak about trees
branches and extensions
out of your own flesh, this chaos
this sweetness, this over-flowing sense of devotion
combined into a walking image
of your biggest failure and your best success

our trees, our names

The trees I carved in my childhood
turn to tell me
they have swallowed the names

wild running

Duckling's feet
I cannot spare you the speed
you need to learn that wild running
gets you nowhere, if you don't look
straight ahead