Grandmama Mama
(I imagine she was a woman connected to Maëlle)
Just Grandmama Mama,
like she was her own mother and myth,
stitched into the earth with salt and ash,
a woman who carried islands in her bones
and the murmur of chains still rusting in her dreams.
She said she was from "the islands of dark"
never said which,
just that the water there knew her blood
and the women whispered of her as mauvais sang
bad blood, cursed kind,
the kind that danced too close to fire
and didn’t flinch when it bit back.
But she was freed
or so they said
and somehow ended up in Louisiana,
a place thick with the same heat and secrets.
She worked her way into houses
like smoke through a chimney,
quiet but everywhere,
hands busy in kitchens that weren’t hers
and mouths opening for her food
before their minds thought to question it.
She cooked with gumption and ghosts,
carried nutmeg in her apron,
and tucked blades of saffron behind her ear.
Her spice blends didn’t have names
just intentions.
Some healed a child’s fever.
Some softened a bitter man’s tongue.
Some sent cruel husbands
walking out the door and forgetting the way back.
People feared her,
loved her,
lied on her name.
Said she’d kissed a ghost beneath a fig tree
and birthed a daughter with eyes like sea glass.
Said she knew how to lay hands on a wound
and pull out what was festering beneath the sin.
Said a snake once curled around her ankle and bowed.
She didn't deny none of it.
She’d just laugh with that one gold tooth
and stir her pot of okra stew,
humming something
that made the floorboards still and listen.
At night she talked to shadows
in patois too old for translation,
and when the firelight hit her face just right,
you saw all her past lives
hovering like smoke over her shoulders
watching, waiting, guarding the bloodline.
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