Stories You Wish Your Mother Told You
She did not love
her first boyfriend either,
even though he’s your dad.
Keep your options open,
because she was
the bougie yellow girl
who wrapped
Johnnie, Jean-Pierre, and Frantz
around her finger.
Keep your options open,
because your aunt
was the bougie brown girl
who kept Junior, Francois, and Ricardo
in her back pocket.
The hair that grows everywhere,
from the thick bush
on your head to down there
does not have to be tamed.
Though she tried.
She shaped her waist to submission,
going to sleep in belts
and drinking lemon water
but you don’t have to.
Your relationship with men
will be strange.
Where she came up,
it was expected to kiss the feet of men
though she was a goddess.
She taught you to cover,
to be awkward in your own curves
because she hated the
the big bones she gave you
She made you learn a foreigner’s tongue,
kept the sway out of your hips,
because she thought there was no room for
Third World Girls.
The stories she never told you
were the heirlooms
she never gave you