Vanessa

A few weeks ago–actually it was the Saturday after the Tree of Life Conference which I wrote about in my last post–I went to the Prisoner Family Lunch along with my fellow intern Tracy and community member Elizabeth. The Prisoner Family Lunch is hosted by a different church each month and we serve and eat with people who are coming down from Atlanta to visit family members or friends in jail down here. From what I had heard from interns who had gone previously, the people who were traveling weren’t very talkative, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I definitely was not expecting anything like the conversation I ended up having. I met an amazing woman who was so fascinating and full of wisdom and we all ended up talking the whole time she was there. I was so moved by her stories and insights that I wrote a poem about her. I have a feeling I am going to be processing our conversation and learning from her wisdom for a very long time. So, here’s my poem (I changed her first name for privacy reasons):

Three weeks later and Vanessa’s smile
is what stuck with me.
After sharing one hour and some food with her,
learning her struggles,
hearing her stories,
I want to save her laughter in a glass jar.

Laughter burning in such rubble should be preserved.

It seems her life has been one blow after another,
she traces the connections through the ash
and finds the trees it has grown
as she ties back her hair with a vibrantly colored bandana.

“I understand the sacrifice needed for love,” she says,
and “all religions have the same core of loving each other
and loving God,
why can’t people see that?”

She speaks of the violence she has witnessed,
the injustices experienced,
with a frankness that only honesty could muster
and barely a fraction of the bitterness
I would allow her.
She lives right and wrong better
than most people sitting in church pews
and doles out judgment far less often.

This is such wisdom paid for at quite a price,
but I want to open my bones to her
and pay her back,
come to her with eager ears
and a box to save her words in and show her how valuable they are.
And she thanks me for the food.

She walks out of the door without a goodbye,
going to visit her boyfriend in jail
and I feel as though I’ve been punched in the stomach,
still trying to catch my breath,
head whirling
without any words to form, for once.
I felt her absence instantly,
but as I looked around the room I was able
to find pieces of her presence to put in my pocket.

It has taken me three weeks to begin write about her,
some of the pieces I’m still holding close,
not ready to expose to the light of the sun,
afraid of dropping some of her beauty like dust
once I take them out.

She has felt the burden of race,
a beautiful mix of Korean and black,
felt home in neither
and home everywhere else.

She has lived all over the world,
saw the Berlin wall come down,
I can’t help but believe she had a hand in it
she’s so good at breaking down walls,
seeing the people on both sides.
What’s a wall of concrete and metal to her?
Graffiti and human ignorance all in one
and once it got started it fell so easily.

She chips away at walls with her words,
soft and burrowing,
finds the innermost bones that look just like hers
and pulls them to the surface
until, in her presence,
you are skeleton,
you are exposed,
you are as you are,
soft and human and gasping for air.

Vanessa can smile through all this wreckage,
she’s done it her whole life,
with her fingers in the rubble
and her eyes above.

Her laughter still trickles through my dreams at night,
I’ll probably be haunted by her for the rest of my life,
an alluring phantasm
burning down barriers
and calling me to do the same.

–Lindsay