Questions From Kavi

«Why does it hurt when I push on my face like this?
Why am I brown but Brienne is white like you?
How come I always know where I am,
Like I can always see through my eyes and feel my bones
And I know where I am but you don’t know where I am?»
You’ve only had your body for five years
And you are still trying to figure it all out
Trying to make sense of the hard parts and squishy parts
And why there are as many colors of skins as there are lunchboxes
And at night
Befor bed
Is the only time quiet enough for you to ask questions
So they pir out of you like rainbowed colored oil streams on the parking lot
And I try not to answer them
To just let you walk the yellow line of existance
And point to the magic of it all
«Yeah, sunrises amaze me too
I don’t know, how do shingles get on roofs?
How do you think the people get in our TV?»
Your answers are always so much more better than mine anyways
«So they eat a lot of sugar and then they get really hyper
And they bounce through this pipe that mashes them up into colors
And then they splatter on the back of our TV so we can see them»
And it’s hard to contain the base beat of «hell yes» that booms through my
chest when you discover the wonder of aliveness
But I don’t wanna freak you out so I just say:
«Yeah, that’s possible»
So easy to quench
You will buy whatever the grown ups tell you just to keep them happy
Once, when you were nervous about me leaving
I put ten kisses in my hand and put them in your pocket and said:
«Here take one out every time you miss me»
And you perked up with a smile,
Put ten kisses in yours and said:
«Here, these are for you if you get scared»
Now, neither of us can leave each other without a pocket full of kisses
And now, as the questions are getting harder
Like: «why do people get married? Why did you chose daddy if you don’t really
like him? And when Jaden touches my hair it makes me feel funny,
should I marry him?»
I feel illequipted to respond
You told me once that people need to clean out their junky brains
And now I’m wishing I had listned
Because as I rifle through old issues and reactions
Like neon green hard rock shirts and old nintendo boxes
Everything seems obsolete and useless
I need to be new for you
I need to be solid for you
Because the questions aren’t getting any easier
Like: «what happens to our bodies when we die? Are bodies buried deep enough so
tornados can’t get them? If I die, will grandma take down the pictures of me in
her house?»
And I, I just tell you not to worry
And you say:
«I can’t help but worry mom, I worry about everything!»
And my world blackens at the though of your little body feeling anything but
safe
I say: «Kavi, give me your worry. I will put it in my pocket and worry about
these things for you so you can get some sleep
And in the morning, if you want, I’ll give it back»
«Mom, you can’t just put worry in a pocket.
My brain will still be thinking about these things.»
And I watch as your innocence fultters away on moth wings
Too delicate to catch
And so I say:
«Okay, here it is baby.
You chose a planet where there are no promises,
No permanence in form, no safety
We are all waiting are spoons through the milk of this reality looking for the
marshmallows
And see worry,
Worry is like guilt, and like tequila and like asperins
A little is helpful but a whole bottle can kill you
It’s like taking a picture of something that never happened
And then mashing yourself up in that color pipe
And splattering yourself inside the picture
And then when you get home you can’t really put yourself back togethert the
same, does that make sense?
And see bodies, bodies are just cars that we’re driving now
And it’s good to take care of them
And get two side airbags if you can
But you’re either gonna crash or get too many miles and have to trade it in
anyway
Luckily God has way better vehicles for you later
But the good news about this Earth is that you can count on beauty
Way more then you can on ugly
'Cause every single day that sun will rise
And it will shout those lavenders and tanderins at you until you wake up
Every day you will hear hip-hop shaking car doors from two blocks way
Every day shingels will be nailed to roofs
Juice will be poured into cups
People will touch your hair and make you feel funny
And you will raise your hand in class and have the right answer
And every night, it will get quiet
And the world will shrink down to just you and me
And you will ask me questions
And you can count on that joy way more than you can count on tornados pulling
caskets from the ground
But yes baby,
Some day
A long, long time from now
you will die»
«Like twenty hundred?»
«Yeah, like twenty hundred»
«Okay mom stop talking and go to sleep»
I stroke your hair behind your ear like my mother did for me
Each brush is a prayer to the silence that holds the sound of your breath
So alive
And so wise