I tell my mother that I want to be a poet


and do not flinch when 26 years of
licking the dirt off the earthworms
no longer tastes like home

I think we forget that the great pyramids of giza
were burial chambers, never meant to hold
anything close to a beating heart, or a living dream
and I wonder why it is that when a child of immigrants
wants to be a poet, we pray instead for a prosperous afterlife

I tell my mother that I want to be a poet
and for a second, we fall in love
leave the men we think we
aren't beautiful enough to abandon
touch palms to the cool tables of our cheeks
hold each other as women do
chest to chest, like we are enough

but if I could write a poem for every time
I have made my mother proud
I would, for once, have nothing to say