How I learned to hold grief at such a young age

Because my mama lost her daddy when she was too young

And she didn’t know how to hold her grief so she let it break

Like waves against the inside of her skin until it was all worn

Down trying to hold her together and she only wanted

My baby older sister to remember grandpa as a happy man,

A man who stuck out his bum playing basketball, who told

Jokes so bad my Navajo grandma would scold him, and kiss him

and make him coffee in that blue kettle their old house

still has somewhere, maybe under the cabinets, or behind

that old flour tin that had maggots one year when my mom

was helping her mom, my scary Navajo grandma, clean it out

and they managed by some Navajo miracle to keep the spam

& eggs from burning on the stove the entire time & I remember too

how my grandmother had a picture of her husband up

until the day she died and even now it’s still there in that house

& how my mother has learned to say hello to the photographs

and clear the gardens every few weeks, and lick her wounds

and somehow make sure we’re never too sad about it,

don’t ever be sad, because they were good people,

great people, in fact, and they never would have said that

sort of thing out loud while they lived, and that is important

to remember because that is exactly the kind of good

that they were, that we were from since the very

beginning