Mind Your Own Business!

It's not about you, but it's about someone you know
and you choose to defend them.
You know me,
but you choose defend them.
So what is it?!
I don't understand.
You want to make ME
feel bad as if my intention was to hurt them,
When YOU don't even know what I was talking about.
You don't even know what YOU'RE talking about!
Instead of opening your mouth trying to start trouble,
MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS
and let me handle mine!!!!!!!!

August 24, 2000.

It was morning, four days after my birthday I woke up to the nice smell of
bacon and coffee... mmmmm.
I stretched, got out of bed and walked into the kitchen.
"G'mornin, K! How ya doin?" Daddy said.
"Fine, it smells good!"
He chuckled and asked me to wake my Grandfather up to eat with us,
a family affair kinda thing.
Especially because we lost my Grandmother a year before.
I bust down the door expecting my Granpa to play his faking trick then tickle me,
"Grannnnpaaaaaaaaaa, time to get up!"
He lay there,
I laughed and repeated, "Grannnnnnpaaaaa, time to wake up! We're about to eat breakfast."
He lay there, still.
"Okay, Granpa. I know you're playing! Time to wake up!!!"
Still, he lay.
I reached to his face in attempt to open his eyes, just to see if he would move
and...
he didn't.
Seeing his eyes rolled back, I screamed:
"DADDYYYY, GRANPA'S DEAD!!!"
I've never seen or heard Daddy run in my entire life, before or after this moment.
He came and noticed Granpa's oxygen machine was off beginning to call him over and over:
"TJ? TJ?? TJ, come on... Wake up, TJ."
Granpa wasn't responsive.
"Run down and get Derrick..." Daddy ordered.
Doing as my father said, my cousin ran up in straight silence.
"Go outside to the neighbor's house, I'll come get you later." Daddy told me.
The ambulance came and took Granpa away soon after.
Hours later, while a friend and I were playing outside the police pulled into our driveway.
We hid behind a parked car and watched the officer give Daddy a yellow slip and say:
"I'm sorry, sir." and Daddy dropped his head.
"I'll be right back!" I told my friend, then ran to my house.
"Is he okay? Will he come back, Daddy??"
"Kay..., he's gone."

"Cutting Greens" by Lucille Clifton

curling them around

i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.