Elijah, grandson

Called to be great

From beyond the grave of mine

Decades after the blue ink

And biological memory ticks to the beat.

Each story shall be told

After appropriately rewritten and retold

Of times when young

A life lesson did I learn

Or not, or not, more often not learned.

Before I started school

I roamed the desserts around my home

And hung out with new friends like Diaz,

Lopez, Sanchez, and Josea.

One night we sat

Around a fire my friends and I

And some new guys

New big guys, older, wiser

Cooler than my old friends

One of them

Challenged me

As he dropped a steel rod

Into the edge of the fire

Can you remove the rod from the flames?

My friend Vernon warned

Don't do it, the end is black but still plenty hot

And the older kid asked

“Are you afraid?”

“Of course not,” I said

Without losing a beat

And reached in and pulled the rod

From fire to ground.

I heard my skin complain

But in the dark light of the fire

No one saw the pain

Saw the pain register on my face,

I sat there until only Vernon remained

As I ran my hand

Through the cool sand

At the end of the day

Hoping somehow to stop the pain

Screaming I’d been played

And maneuvered against my own hand.

In time, my one friend

As darkness settled in

Talked me into going in

Telling my mom and Aunt Min

My hand was in pain

And I’d been played.

Butter in those days

Was the cure

Or not the more correctly

As I endured without crying

The pain of not being true

And trusting my own way.

Roe

April 2022