Can you hear Chopin too?

Someone knocks at the door

It is Uncle Frankie

Who always asks for sugar

Who I always make a cup of hot coffee for

Who I always make a sandwich for

Sometimes I give him fruit

My parents’ aren’t here

And I am scared of my brother

There will be consequences

There are always consequences

So I say, Nothing today

I can’t help you today

And close the door

This morning, 

my brother locked 

the white cupboard

I heard the lock click

My brother wants to put a gate 

up in front of the house

But his druggie friends 

are welcome in his parents’ house

There was one druggie, Christopher, 

that his son didn’t like

My brother and Christopher would drink 

rum and coke and whisky 

in his father’s study

One day, my mother even made hotdogs

My nephew stayed in the room

While my brother and Christopher 

ate at the dining room table

As I slept in my bedroom

The men who drank that night away

walked up and down in the darkness

of the passage to the bathroom

I didn’t sleep that night

For a long time, I just haven’t felt safe

in my childhood bedroom

in my parents’ house

How to stay sane?

How to stay safe?

I eat noodles 

as if they were psalms

I make hymns 

out of mashed potato

I turn the roasted vegetables 

into gospel truths

And I wait, watch, look and listen

as the vegetable soup morphs

into the verdant-green jewel of the African continent

I want to forget about all the brown girls

who laughed at me at the Model C school 

I went to in high school

I want to forget about all those brown clowns

laughing, pointing at me

Those girls who knew my brother

Those girls who partied with my brother

Those girls whose sisters knew my brother

Those same girls who partied with my brother

I want to forget about the year 

I spent in the library pretending to read

As my eyes watered

Two silvery-edged ponds

I want to forget about all those brown faces 

who laughed at me at the police station

Those brown faces that remembered my brother 

from high school in a subeconomic area

when he left Grey because he had cool brown friends

who drank and smoked cigarettes

He was nearly expelled from his new school

because of those cool brown friends

I can hear Chopin

in my mother’s voice

I can hear the fear 

in my mother’s voice

Go to your room

Read a book

Knit, she says

She gets 

into the car

They will be back 

within the hour

from Cancer Care

But, it will be 

an eternity for me.