Porsche Garrett
Editor-in-Chief
God’s love is all my mother knows—
righteous, angry, forgiving love.
Forgiving the hands that headlock dragged her out of the car
and left her stranded in a China King parking lot
taking deep, ragged breaths of sesame oil scented air.
Forgiving the hands that chucked her phone
into plastic confetti amidst glass glittering on the floor.
She danced around the shards,
as the red blue lights raved the night away.
She loves with nails clawed back into skin.
Washing away the red crescent moons on her fingers
at night, rubbing aloe lotion into the crooked tic-tac-toe board
of scars stretched across her freckled flesh.
She loves the way a forest fire ravages all in its path,
and yet, in the morning, new sprouts begin to pop
from the still steaming earth. Always
stretching from the turmoil of the dark earth,
burdensome, heavy, rigorous, stiff, suffocating,
trying not to choke before
the dawn light can reach.
In a room of beige walls and black and white pictures,
next to him in bed she kisses his cheek so tender, so soft.
Reads Corinthians in her head,
the instructions on how to hone in your heart
ripped from the pages of her weathered Bible.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
What is there to boast about? Endurance?
Enduring is the ugly stench of sweat seeping from your pits
and dropping like litter from your brow.
It is not self-seeking, it keeps no record of wrongs.
The heart doesn’t need to record what the skin keeps on its mantle.
My mother loves like God.
Each night a flooded Earth.
Each morning the dove with an olive twig
wilting in its beak.