Mampee-Water
By Natasha Marin

Where I come from the rain is fat
like green fists of heavy banana leaf,
cuffing the side of my chin. When
it comes, the air is chunks, not slivers—
big-boned with puddles and wet fruit.

Nobody thinks this is a miracle—dragging
empty gourds into the street. Nobody
dances, like a fool—with arms stretched out
like Jesus on the cross.

                                          We get home
as fast as we can. We watch the curtains
go from light to dark as tears seep through
the caulk. Sometimes Auntie makes food—
pigeon peas and rice, stewed chicken, ground
provisions—and the smell is heavier
than the belly rolls of water falling from
the sky. It will stick to your skin for days
like the salt in the sea. Unbroken, the tide gulps
those drops like brown thighs and hips.

The rain can not take the smell of burnt sugar
and allspice from your palms. It can’t make you forget
what the sky looks like off of Maracas Bay,
but it can pull people together like a string—
it will make them turn on their heels,
leaving a swirl like a stain in the sand,
and remember the way
their mother’s voice sounds—

            coming through the walls
            of their first house

Copyright © Natasha Marin. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author

Natasha Marin hails from Trinidad by way of Canada. She holds degrees in English from Tufts University and the University of Texas, respectively. A participant in the Callaloo Writers' Workshops, and co-founder of the Gibbous Moon Collective, her work has been published in several magazines including Borderlands, International Poetry Review, Southern Indiana Review, and Midwest Quarterly.

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