The Nearest Body of Water Is My Grandmother

Photo by Thierry Meier on Unsplash

Haunani-Kay Trask said empire demands death.
Uē ka lani, ola ka honua. Sky weeps, land lives.
The nearest body of water is my grandmother.

If my grandmother weeps, my body floods.
Good descendants collect sandbags for life.
The favorites know how to dig a ditch.
Haunani-Kay Trask said empire demands death.

I know nothing about roosters with razors for feet.
I know everything about roosters with razors for feet.
My grandmother was a gambler, but if she were holy water,
her blessings were printed in the paper as the only woman
arrested in the raid. Fight money hidden in the washing machine.
Haunani wasn’t the first Hawaiian woman to teach me empire.

Don’t be a rat, said my grandmother. And she was right.
In Kahului, we had chickens and dead cats. Juicy Fruit gum.
If you were close enough to hear my grandmother chew,
you were close enough to get slapped.

Uē ka lani. I have never seen my grandmother cry.

I don’t know why but the story I cling to most tells it like this:
my grandfather died and she walked to the nearest body of water
in Paukūkalo. No one got close enough to redirect her grief.
No one remembers what the sky was doing
or who was screwing who. Empire took my grandfather
before I was born and walked my grandmother to the sea.
Ola ka honua.

But she left marks in the earth.