Watching you Sleep

Kay Bell

Elizabeth Catlett, Mother and Child. lithograph, 1944. Credit...The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY, via Art Resource, NY

“When a gust of wind summoned by prayer catches a loose door and blows it back,
smacking it against a house’s cracked siding.
A young boy only hears:

Get out.
There is something coming that you cannot survive.”

—Hanif Abduraraqib

for Zaire

In a subtle disquiet      I creep into your room
            I hear your breaths       outlining the moon
I whisper         I Love You    through the thick of my lips
& wait to see your chest         rise and fall;
             a fortified kingdom...

 
These walls know how much I’ve cried for you
            How afraid I’ve become         after Trayvon, Michael and Tamir
How anxious it makes me   to see you off to school
            unarmed and oblivious to the perils

 
But your impatience for me has grown   it lingers beyond my understanding
You no longer look me in the eyes     your breaths only expand the distance between us

            You are no longer the boy building trains out of cardboard
or blowing dish detergent bubbles
Where have you gone?   You are not the boy singing                                    songs off-key    building capes out of towels     I search everywhere                            gone

 
I know this doesn’t mean much now:   the prayers    the grill cheese sandwiches   the movie dates
            the words of warning    the Saturday morning lessons     the weekday chores
but I wish for you that when the seasons change you will be equipped

that you will conquer and not just endure
that you will forfeit fear
that your authority will be unconfined    and resurrected in your darkest hours

I pray your America won’t be whitewashed in self-hatred
and your dreams         more than clichéd metaphors

I also pray I haven’t disappointed you

My boy   each time I watch you sleep   it is a beautiful twinkling of peace
            The house rattles in ecstatic symphonies          your snoring

rest                                                                         
before the world begins baring her teeth  
before your blackness becomes a threat
before the stars stop coming

                                    rest
because something is always coming             but        you will survive
sleep     my beautiful black boy
for it brings such joy to your mother

Kay Bell is the author of the poetry chapbook, Cry Sweat Bleed Write (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020). She received her MFA from The City College of New York where she was the 2015 recipient of the Esther Unger Poetry Prize, and the 2018 co-recipient of the David Dortort Prize in Creative Writing for Non-Fiction. Kay lives in the Bronx and considers herself a bibliophile. @iamkaybell