On Mondays, my grandfather visits the cardiologist. He believes there are angels walking on his chest. It’s Tuesday and I’m walking home with his old heart in a jar.
At Sea World my nanny once said, “it’s ridiculous to be given an old heart as if it’s an object, like expensive cement, or a leg so blistered and plunging.” Now she’s dead.
Reincarnated as the centipede father squashed; she’s dead again. This is why mother became a therapist, for people like grandfather and father. Occasionally, the clouds resemble the terrible things
I see in the lake. A stone falls from a cliff, the dog barks, and a boy cuts his thigh. I trust grandfather could see the future with the exactitude of a prophet, a magician, a witch. He could turn wars
into carnivals, hospitals into planets, sprinkle glitter on the militant helmet, the war-beating-drums, the gun barrel, a barrel of crushed eggs and salt. For a time, father hunted like a bee, and mother,
as a magician, transformed his Heineken into vinegar, winged creatures in greenbottles; doves, vultures, owls. I flip through The New York Times as the rainstorm begins.
The headline reads A POET SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE AMID THE RAINSTORM. A death atoning for God’s loss. Soon father proceeds to speak of a house frequented by dead centipedes.
I think of illnesses as I watch father speak to the breeze, and mother bite her bottom lip. Outside, there’s anger in the clouds and the house remains quiet. I cough and I smell my own breath,
an aged air. Father is everywhere, wandering from the kitchen to the verandah to the bedrooms, to the hallway, walls painted in blue and green, the photos telling he still lives.
“So, do you want a clean house or a heart,” he murmurs. Nothing like father’s hunt for bees; I do not crave honey. I will not beat on the pristine sink. Father wonders under the anemic light
excavating old personalities from his Heineken years. It’s not good to see him there, flirting his way through the house as a peacock. “Your husband is okay if you are okay with your husband,”
I hear mother speak under her breath as she too watches. Tonight, the mangoes are pungent, and the rain continues to fall on the patio. The entire continent begins to flood,
and Bach can be heard on the radio. Father goes on to measure the weight of the rain to see if it’s heavy like the earth. I know I have despised everything, rain and drought, night and day,
gold and sand, words and numbers. I’ve turned on my own organs as I watch father’s memory drag itself through a thousand lanes to the verandah.
He claims, “we own the rain.” Mother no longer looks for salvation in the fantasies of churchgoers though father continues to catch rain drops. What will people say
when they hold grandfather’s heart in a jar? What will people know when they hear mother whimper or see father chase cars? For now, I’ll stand on the verandah and call out to the sun.
Brian Gyamfi is a Ghanaian-American writer from Texas. He is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize, two Hopwood Awards, and a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Poetry International Prize. He is a contributing editor at Oxford Poetry.
