Scott Frost | The First Thing They Take

The First Thing They Take

I.

before you learn your kradin
is the first thing they take.
not gently–
nothing sort of exciting–
but like a tax, they take
even though you didn’t agree to pay.

II.

a cry is demanded from you
like rent
you give it
or perhaps you’re made to
because what else does a body do
when it is dragged
from a place
that never asked it to prove
it was alive?

III.

so they take your peace.
that thick, sacred quiet
you wore like tough skin.
before air found you
and broke your lungs open.

IV.

then they take your body
and begin to divide it:
face, sex, and a future you will apologize for.
someone laughs (not cruelly)
yet hard enough
to make the room feel like a verdict.

V.

you are measured
to be understood.
weighed
as if you were
your mother’s consequence.

VI.

and somewhere in the corner,
your mother is learning
how to let go of a pain
that has already become you.

*****

My Mother Said I was Born

with my fists clenched.
in them, some say, i held sedeɛ
that i had come from somewhere
that required keeping.

they washed me
like wasted chopbar earthenwares.
and chipped the silence
clinging to my tough skin.

i did not cry immediately.
it is said at home
that it is only devilish to come smiling.

i listened.
the room full of mouths
learning how to pronounce me–
the nurses bending over my body
passing push syllable through my thighs.

someone slapped my back
into existence.
and just like that,
i began in pain.

*****

a man’s eyes
glow

when air rushed
into my
lungs
& expectation
tightened around my
wrist
like invisible bracelets,
my father held me
like a fragile argument
& wondered how
bones
could sketch
themselves together
with precision
& darkness could wrap
a practicing beating
heart
into fragility & tenderness,
that could possibly make a man’s
eyes
glow with love.
look, he said

i was proof
that something had
finally goon right.

*****

Notes:
Kradin– a typical Ghanaian name given to a child depending on the day they were born in the week
Sedeɛ – local name for cowrie shells

*****

Poems (c) Scott Frost
Image: Carlos Pimentel Unsplash cropped