Wearing My Mother’s Heart

Introduction My two grandmothers, while loving God, also each loved men who loved a different God. And in the Gambia, in 1965, if you were born to African, Christian fathers, you weren’t expected to fall in the kind of love that swapped your father’s last name for a Southeast Asian man’s. My grandmothers on both sides were powerless against the pull of their hearts and chose love over tradition, boldly and publicly falling in love with men outside of their religion. To them, love should always come first, before any career. Hearing their stories carves a space for compassion in today’s less forgiving society. My parents are fruit of a new seed planted in our family tree. They were born from the audacity of love.   It is rare to look at a parent and find the right example and not just the right answers. I’ve never known someone to dedicate themselves to love and care as much as my mum does. At least, not since her own mum, my grandmother. They keep that in common—it’s a religion we are still guided by: this promise to each other.   And now, after twenty-six years of studying my mother and grandmothers, I realize that my mouth mostly speaks from the abundance of their love. While recognizing the necessity of progress, it’s imperative to understand the stories that the women before us lived, to then understand why they think and reason as they do. Our experiences are vastly different. Naturally, our opinions on love, race and womanhood clash hugely . . . but not our hearts. Our mothers’ hearts we still share.   Their hearts have always been more powerful than any rule or rationale, but never more powerful than their religion. How they have worn many hearts at a time and still survived is precisely how they taught me about God. And with God, they taught me power, and with power, they opened my eyes to politics, and with politics, they showed me people . . . and from people, they gave me poetry. I hope that these poems bear that out as they lead you through reflections on family, identity, first love, grief, belief and resolution. It took following their journeys from Africa to London, to understand why bravery was never a choice. It was their only option, to survive. I wear their hearts today, proudly . . . Well, at least I try Grandma’s Forbidden Love And if all our love can ever be, is this moment, eternity sink into a second, pull our pulses into one. Kiss me until the war of our histories wraps a white flag around our tongues and the rules of tradition surrender to the rules of love. All We Need Is . . . I had someone to face life with, and that felt like all I’d ever need to survive the hands of this world. Halve a Heart, Half a Life How is it possible that you have flooded into my life like this? Before you, the todays and tomorrows lacked nothing, the present was pleased, satisfied, whole, I thought.   Yet now I miss, as if I was just delivered a heart As if half of my brain has opened for the first time and I am powerless but to think of how much sweeter every tomorrow stands to be now that I know you and know this love. Even an Island Needs Two For nine months, I filled my body with love Stretched past my bones and became a home I planted a heartbeat into the soil Rained poems and prayers Absorbed leaves into my bloodstream Created a forest for you to come from But you made a country of me, Pushed entire seas between the plains of my skin You taught my body to hold you Stuffed my ears with your fingers and wrote a billion songs to your rhythm Wrapped me in your tablature and we heard the world sing of how you wait to meet us one day.   You put a new song to my ears.   I learned to listen, to be    still   and I heard love breathe.   I untied my skin into the air and felt your trust in every passing centimeter.   I carried the earth on my hips Shared skin with destiny Saw the world for what it could be Because if sex could be this, then you are already our miracle. We held head and hands and spoke with God about you Asked him for your father’s eyes for three hundred nights And while mine closed, He watched over you making room for you to become. Cracked my life into two One for me and one for love.   Look at how love can double us How it reteaches us trust and time How nine months can remind us that union is the essence of life . . .   May we never forget   The traditions that hold in hope of carrying us through whatever the foreign world may put us through. Dance—The Safe Return to Yourself When we landed, gold in our mouths, our tales were cut off with our mother tongue, but our feet were quick to refind our pulse. So feel closely, how your body responds to the sounds of similar souls,   and follow your rhythm back home. If I Can No Longer Know Home, Let Me Know Heaven We landed and our goals, once Prophecies . . . shrunk into only dreams. God had never been more needed, and so He arrived as a lifeline that we thread through the darkness to sew our own skyline to pray to.   If I can no longer know home, let me know heaven.