me and mama speak in the same language now.

In head and eyes and face mixing frowns.

I won't speak a word and she'll listen.

When she picks me up from the police mans room.

It isn't the mama I know.

she's looks like her in the way her brown skin glows. And her hair matches mine in wisps and knottiness. Hers is tied back and smoothed, her veins have blood that I know is cold but-

She's looking at me like warmth.

She's got no light round her but

She calls my name,

I run to her.

She's aged. In soul, I know I can see it.

I've told her sorry so many times but this time she can can feel it.

and

I don't hold mama much,

but this holding felt like all the ones I've ever missed. She feels solid, and firm and bony and fat in all different spots. She got tears on her face and wrinkles on her skin. She's feeling like everything alive and breathing and well. She's saying words in her mind I've always wanted to hear.

This,

It's sweet and pressed,

all the good candies are.

and there's not magic and no flashy light no angel wings. Just mama, and her rugged.

And her breathing, and her small ribbed chest.

I lean in, smelling the apartment wood and old dressers, the cheap laundry soap and hair oils.

Just mama, and her real

I tell her,

I killed him.

She tells me,

She knows.

then presses palms on my face, kisses cheeks that wanted kissing since spring.

Mama's car got two ghosts and a cat near it,

We tell them all to get in.

She turns the radio up. Let's the sound of something better than silence fill us.

I sit between my brother and daddy the whole ride home. Stick my hand out the window and surf air with my brothers hands. Fall asleep on daddy's shoulders, drool on his shirt. Tell all of them about my summer, and the garden that grew me.

I don't open my eyes until I see the smoky stacks of the grey city again.

On the chess board of death me and mama sit even.

She dropped the ghosts off and told me not look back and watch em wave.

She's no tears.

We can't keep em around too long, ghosts don't belong with the living girl. They got a home just like me and you.

And angels, I don't wanna play with the angels no more.

They're bright and pretty but their wings can only carry themselves.

We're too heavy for em to lift, too much for them to carry.

Too much blood and bone.

Without enough halo.

Too much real not enough god.

And we sure as hell ain't gods.