if i tell you i love, will you stay
a love letter to my grandpah
i was the only girl you ever carried on your back. and last week when mom told me you had six-months-to-a-year i melted into your back wrapped my fingers around your liver so i could find your cancer and pull it into myself. but i think i shrank into myself instead because i couldn’t find your cancer. i mean i had books to read and midterms to take and a revolution to fight and i know it must’ve been lonely fighting the revolution in your body by yourself but i couldn’t really believe it was real and i know i’m selfish but i love you i do i love you and i want to keep you and your love in my pockets and i want to keep seeing your elephant wrinkled skin even when i wrinkle. so maybe maybe if i grow up faster you can see that your life is my life and that your existence is anything but small even though the cancer makes you feel small. but forget the doctors because i think medicine is full of shit and life is full of shit but you you’re full of wonderfuls and courage and it’s probably dandelions growing in your liver. and i know i’m naïve but i love you and i love you so come up six hours to my graduation and if six hours is too much a lifetime then i’ll build you an airplane and fly you to me and if airplanes are too scary then i’ll carry you on my back so we can take photos of you in your brown worn vest hugging my gown-capped smile. and we have to take pictures because mom says i have a memory of a goldfish with three seconds too short and i don’t want to not remember you but three seconds remembers only your balding spot when i want to remember a lifetime of spots like sunspots and brown spots and the spots where your angry eyes meet your angry love and i want you to be here to carry me down the graduation aisle and then the wedding aisle. i know i’m selfish but you need to carry me down the aisle even though i don’t believe in marriages and life-long-loves but i life-long-loved you and you’re the only person i want to give me away even if i don’t want to give you away. i mean they’re only dandelions and if you want i’ll hand pick each and every one of them out of your body and hold them in my hands. and if you want we can make wishes with the stupid dandelions because i love you and i love you and grandpah, you have to keep carrying me because i am the only girl you ever carried on your back.
Written February 9, 2010. A L’Oreal Snell poem from Poetry for the People, Berkeley, CA.
