jeudi, octobre 13, 2005

What More Can I Say?


There's nothing I'd like
better than to fall
but I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
I have nothing to give

I speak to my sister daily. Well, almost. I used to be good with it. I've been slacking. But I'm getting back together. Nightly conversations with family. I call my sister 'cause I love her. I don't call everyone else 'cause I don't love myself. Enough. At least that's what a she* told me and I'm a believe her.

I call my sister because we are in this life together. Me, Jalylah; her, Aisha; my mother Julie. I've always felt that way. I don't expect additions. I don't pretend that this is a good outlook. It's where I am and have been. We are more than sufficient. Abundance in human form. That doesn't mean I have to stop here but it's easier that way.

Nightly conversations with friend? I speak to D daily. Well almost. I lost my footing but I'm catching the beat, focusing on the blank space between each partner's eyes beneath the third. Try and catch it. Try, try, again. I'll step in mine own name or merengue, if that's how you call it. My Colombian instructor, the inimitable Ricardo, is in Colombia last I heard and his anonymous successor is probably grinding up on some anonymous tourist in Puerta Plata. D commented on how easy it is to lose the beat staring, as it were and still is, at someone else. But you can't look away. Down or up in ecstatic abandon, yes, but never away. That's the hard part.

Me and D were talking about secrets. D saw something on 60 Minutes that sounded like what I saw online. Laylah sent it to GSCN. I remember and then I added it to my blogroll and read it religously for a meantime then stopped. D was excited by it no doubt but probably more at the prospect of revealing it to unsuspecting partners in crime. But I burst the bubble.

D has no secrets or so she says. I believe her. I don't say anything. I think I have a secret but D already knows it so does L and M dot. GW knows another and we don't even speak no more. Mama and 'dem know one but wouldn't imagine it a secret. "Can it be a secret if someone else knows it?" I ask. "It's a secret if there's someone you don't want to know it." D responds. Good answer.

So I have a flat ass, not a secret, and I buy small underwear. A 5 usually, never a 4 'cause despite what Mya says they don't make 'em. Today I have on some undies I bought at a Macy's type department store in Greensboro with a caravan of extended fam, women exclusively. Caught with some downtime before the wedding, we hustled to the mall. I bought a few items cause they were cute and on sale but mostly to be social. You gots to have some booty to display in the car ride home or back at the hotel. "Look, see! Periwinkle silk panties with lace trim. Originally 25 dollars. Marked down to 4 and then 50% off. Can't beat that." Oohs, ahhs. Aunties cursing they expanded backsides, "I used to be able to wear those now its strictly control top microfibers." Upon return to the city of your residence, you** wash panties gentle cycle. Dry open air and then file in the overflowing panty drawer. As the songwriter should write, "you can never have to many underwears." You shimmy periwinkle panties on, months later, only to find out they are too small. A quarter inch of crack exposed without bending. But laundry baskets overflowing and even if it wasn't, you paid good money for the periwinkle panties and they cute. You get used to the 3/4 inch crack exposure masked by the too tight light wash jeans thanking the Lord inside you ain't wear the Japanese low riders.

To L: "We right here."

*not Aisha
**in this case, me