Before the Ever After(14)

we just laughed every time that part came on.

We’d all been there.

Been where? I asked.

At that table where you sat down hungry and the minute the food landed,

your stomach turned to stone.

I remember my friend’s mama putting a plate of liver in front of me. With onions and plantains and I don’t know what all else.

But don’t you dare not eat it and embarrass your friend and insult his mama, my daddy said.

So I slid that liver and onions into the pocket of my coat.

Grease stains on that coat forever.

Write that down, ZJ, my daddy said.

Sounds like the beginning of one of our songs.

It’s just about some food, though, I said.

Nah. It’s about everything, my dad said back.

That’s where these great songs

are coming from. The simple stuff, like what you see and what you eat and what you hide in your pocket to throw away.

And how something

you thought wasn’t even worth remembering gets remembered anyway.





Our Songs


There’s a bunch of notebooks full of our songs.

My scrubby handwriting and mostly Daddy’s words.

I leaf through one of the books and find this: Grease stains on my pocket forever, Mama tryna get the truth out of me—never.

Liver in the pocket? Nah, son.

Tell my mama that? Be ready to run.

But ain’t nobody cook like you, Mama.

So let me off the hook with this drama, Mama.

Liver in my pocket gotta be

a story for when I’m grown—trust me.

I remember how much fun we had rapping that, my daddy’s voice strong and me,

I’m singing the backup echo parts, never and nah, son and Mama and gotta be and trust me.

And some nights, after my own mom went to bed, we’d put on some music—old-school groups like Digable Planets and Arrested Development and even sometimes

Menudo and Boyz II Men. And we’d drop our lyrics over theirs.

Ours are way better, I’d tell Dad.

Used to be I could go to my daddy anytime, say Let’s put down some music.

And he’d stop whatever thing he was doing or turn off whatever show he was watching,

smile at me and say Yeah, let’s go drop some real beats.

Now mostly I play my guitar alone.

Sing those songs.

And remember how good it felt to make music together.





Skate Park


Me, Ollie, Daniel and Darry

meet up at the skate park for Daniel’s twelfth birthday.

It’s crowded with kids doing ollies and grinds and kick flips on the ramps but we don’t care.

Daniel can outskate every single one of them

because wheels are wheels. Bike, skateboard, blades, doesn’t matter.

I don’t believe in gravity, he says, flipping his board up into his hands.

We have boards too. Pads and helmets and even mouth guards. Darry’s got braces now, and his mother said if he even breaks a bracket,

she’s going to take his board away.

I’m not so good on the board—just go slow and try to make some cool turns on the back wheels, but I fall.

The four of us skate off to the side, away from the other kids, but then Daniel jumps over into the circle of everything, does some magic and skates back to us. And even though it’s him

with the skills, feels like it’s all of us.

Feels like we’re all just one amazing kid the four of us, each a quarter

of a whole.





New Normal


Monday morning, I come down all dressed in jeans, a football jersey and a T-shirt underneath to find Mama kneeling in front of Daddy,

pulling socks onto his feet

and him staring out the window.

Already hasn’t been a great morning, Mama says.

Zachariah, say good morning to your son, she tells my dad.

But he keeps looking straight ahead, his brow creased like he’s deep in concentration.

Hey, Dad, I say anyway, come over to him, kiss the top of his head. He jumps a little but keeps staring.

And now Mama is at the stove, spooning oatmeal into a bowl for me, sprinkling nuts on top and slicing banana over it.

I can do that, I tell her.

But you don’t have to, Mama says back.

Not yet. Be a boy for a little while longer.

I look over at Dad again, his head hanging now and moving slowly from side to side.

This isn’t some kind of new normal, my mom says.

We’re gonna get this figured out, ZJ.

She pushes the bowl of oatmeal toward me.

What time is it? my dad says. I got to get to my game.

You have time, my mom says back to him. You have plenty of time.





Memory like a Song


Sometimes I’m just sitting in my room and a song will come on the radio that stops something inside of me, makes me sit up straight on my bed

and listen. Sometimes, it’s the piano chords, a sweet riff that has all eighty-eight keys talking.

Sometimes it’s the drums—high hat telling a story—I don’t know

how to explain the way music moves through my brain and my blood and my bones.

Doesn’t make me want to dance like Darry, though.