My addiction to Death’s attention
Death knocks on my mother’s front door every six to nine months to deliver his best news. He captured another family member’s soul. Death tells all. About the incident. The mistakes. The lack of money. And then puts a battery in my mother’s back to make a judgment. She blames the drugs if it’s someone young. Kills the doctors if it’s someone old. And then we prepare for a family reunion at the family church, no one attends anymore. Between the screams, cries, and phone calls to relatives, my mother pulls a little black dress from my closet that was too small two funerals ago.
We look upon our family, asleep in caskets trimmed with gold, riding in the back of limos driven by a man in an even cleaner suit. But before we meet the body, I stare in mirrors rehearsing prayers, practicing falling tears and plot on the single white carnation I plan to wear on my chest later that night. Dreaming of lying in bed, pretending to be dead. Not thinking, blinking, or breathing—taking short sips of air. I don’t want to meet Death but I like to dance quietly at his front door.
He hears me, sneaking peeks of my performance through the peep hole. And then he adds a little music to the mix to change my mood with each song played, forcing me to remember who he has taken from me as I laugh, cry, and then laugh-cry until I’m looking for an empty vase to toss at the wall to break up the sadness. I end the night on two bended knees praying a lie to God, begging to be saved.
Grief showed up at my house one day with a bouquet of white carnations
Grief showed up at my house one day with a bouquet of white carnations still covered in dirt that escaped from six feet under. I was browned at the edges, curled into brittle pieces of girl. My hands melted across my mouth ‘cause I refused to hear myself scream or smell the gel bonded to my sister’s fallen curls that now lie dead. He asked if I wanted another chance, to show up and be present at the feet of death. I declined. Later that day I found him steeping at the bottom of my tea cup, cranking the loss so high, the chamomile lifted my hair. He offered me a night out on the town. Painted portraits of my younger self bouncing between church pews. Dressed my closet in all-black. And filled my mailbox with feelings of love, frill, and remembrance. Still, I wasn’t interested. Once he left me alone I bathed until my tears were all washed up. I had nothing to remember her by and Grief had changed his number.
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Niesha Okere is a poet/fiction writer from Philadelphia. She is the author of the chapbook, Blue Girls (Finishing Line Press, 2024). Her work appears or is forthcoming in hex literary, Variant Literature, Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere.