Forgiveness Cistern I Am Trying
BY GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI
The boys kicked the door.
They kicked the door again
so hard the house shook.
The boys called me Sir
but not in a way that made
me feel debonair. The boys
asked if we had daughters
because they wanted to come
in the house and get some
pussy. The boys told me
to go fuck myself. The boys
brought the larger boys
to stand outside our house.
I am trying to remember
it’s a time of forgiveness.
I am trying to remember
my body has never been
my home. I wave and water
the garden. I offer the flowers
from the bed. The mint, rosemary,
sure take a few tomatoes,
take whatever you can hold?
Ms. Sylvia lived here for
years and taught the whole
block to garden. People
would bring lawn chairs
out to watch her tend it.
Raymond told me she taught
him everything he knew.
Said she grew snake plants
eight feet tall and brought
them in for winter. His
landlord kicked him out
of the boardinghouse
and then he died of COVID.
I heard from another neighbor
who didn’t remember Ms. Sylvia
at all. I can’t tell how long it was
before someone lived here before
we did. It was a while. Ms. Edna
said the house was empty and she’d
been tired of babysitting. But still.
It was someone’s. It wasn’t ours.
Who planted the irises in the back?
Is the pokeweed here because
the birds carried it or because it is
good medicine and salad so someone
had a crop?
From the middle of the earth to the
firmament, I pray in the middle of the
night, to try getting everyone and all
the animals and other breathing things.
I include the water and the rocks.
The owls who’d been here for as long
as Ms. Edna remembers and then
we had to take the willow oak
down. And now they’re gone.
When the boys call me Sir
in a way that does not recognize
my attention to my hair and to
my bow tie, I try to remember
it’s Lent. When they kick
the door I try to remember
every breath that’s been here
before me. C drove past
then pulled her minivan back
to meet me and say how she
grew up in our house and next
door. Her uncle died of AIDS
there. Her aunt held him
in her arms in the driveway.
They’d been living as next-door
neighbors for years.
A new plant pops up that we never
planted and we think, probably
something Ms. Sylvia planted
that got shaded out by the oak.
And now the light comes in
and now the bloom comes forward.
What would Jesus do is a question
I genuinely ask myself. Not a bumper
sticker. A bodhisattva and young
man prone to anger as much as
he was prone to love. What would
that young man do? As the boys
kick the door that was not always
mine. As the boys break the planters.
As the boys call me Sir in a way
that makes my blood run cold. From
the middle of my world to my
firmament. I am trying. l’m not there.
