Mariana Chajon
I finally told you
You cried,
denied,
pushed,
even forgot.
Accepted, accept it, excepting, excepted
Axe etching a sentence
exhaling acts as an ending
they all sound the same to you
you take us on a family holiday
to the capital,
the parliament.
we cross the street and a portal opens
to a land of domination, erasure, and capitulation.
a group of people holding a bunch of signs
written on them: god doesn’t love me
hot thick salty sweat on my face as the sun tans my skin,
I look down at my clothes
and feel fear in the back of my head
a bullet had been nested there
all my life,
itching twenty years later
and the sweat starts burning my forehead
it leaves a mark made of ashes in the form of a cross
god-loving
god-fearing
god-dammit
I turn to leave but you hold me back,
as if walking through this is a rite of passage
that will get me closer to you.
so holy, so effortlessly.
my brother leads the way out
God bless him
i will never forget how your face looked as you cried
even if you apologized
one time
the image comes back
it’s hard to believe
it took me a long time to unlearn
what you taught me at sixteen
_______
In Ottawa
2023 | Poème | Québec, Canada