“The truth of the business” is how my grandmother
opens every opinion that she’s ever had.
It could never sound the same from my pink lips—
that confidence she breathes that only comes
with ninety-two-plus years of experience.
Hers are pale with cracks grooved into them
that look something like trenches in a battlefield.
They remind me of the boy who could not support the war
that killed his brother and the girl who disagreed
because it kept her mother alive. It may not go far
in politics, but when I heard their stories they both
seemed right somehow—kind of like when
my baby sister whines about our brother and he’s
minding his own business in the corner, reading books
at a level twice his age and laughing that
her R’s are always backwards. They both need me
to tell them that they’re right so they can know
that truth exists and they can find it. But I’m not quite sure
just where it could be. My high school English teacher
said that God is in the gray and black and white
are of our making. We make the contrast scream as loudly
as orange freckles on pale skin. But I stopped listening to it
a long time ago. Now I sit on the floor with Ani using every rainbow color
to help write stories for Joseph. And I know there will be truth in every word.
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