Maisha's Mindscape

There was the willow tree out by the lake Where I learned to kiss. The lake was at the edge of town So when my sister almost drowned me And the birds sang my funeral hymn, No one could hear the shouts. I had my first date in the gas station on Emry Street And he bought me a bunch of junk food. He made it tradition for "our thing" And the 5 a.m staff still know us by name.  The convenience store on Parke Street Is where I learned to love for the first time. It was after a day of running over orange cones, And low self-esteem. It was a beat-up blue car That barely ran through the town. In the convenience store when the ac was blasting And old pop songs played on the intercom, We raced through aisles Trying to find the things our parents wanted, And maybe the little pieces of us We had dropped years prior. The community pool was at the edge of town. It was right near the high school with its yellow doors. The community pool was for the kids Because the lakes were meant for us. Y...

 My mother had a habit of making homes out of places she was never welcomed. She had lived on this island for all 46 years of her life, yet she had never found a home for herself. She lived on top of the hills in Campbell where she could hear the children scream from the streets below. When she went to Salisbury and she walked the dirt paths up the hills that made her hands seem cracked and brittle like dried up clay, she decided to call it home. She lived in Bath Estate for many years before leaving and then living there for many more. She taught me about pretty yellow and orange flowers that her grandmother grew. Her grandmother is dead now and she apparently took those flowers with her. Before my mother lived in quiet Pointe Michel, she visited loud Pointe Michel to see her sister. Then the loud became the quiet and it was unsettling. But not to her. She decided to call it home. Another house on a hill. I don't think I ever understood my mother's fascination with living on h...

  To The House I Grew Up In, I visited you a couple weeks ago, or maybe it was months. I can't seem to keep my days straight anymore. The outside looked different but it wasn't such a major change that I didn't recognize the place I grew up. There was still that gate that faced the street that we would tire ourselves out on. The house was still painted the same colour and the same number of windows were there. But the flowers at the front were missing. Those hedges that hid the front yard from the outside world, they were gone. They were gone and I didn't know when they disappeared. There weren't any flowers outside the fence surrounded by rocks anymore. Maybe it's because she's dead. She was the one who planted all those flowers. But I was fine with those simple changes because everything else seemed the same. It still seemed like that house I grew up in. That house we would stay up in when there was no electricity and tell stories, stories that scared me a...

  To The Yellow House I Spent Most Of My Time In, You were always yellow to my knowledge. You were always there. You had that bunk bed and that flat-screen television but before that, you had a huge piece of my childhood. I remember when all the kids were there and we would have the time of our lives. We would come to visit and we would have so many laughs and the fact that they're gone now is heartbreaking. I have vague memories of playing power rangers in your yard. I have memories of playing shop with cousins that weren't actually our cousins. I remember us all piling onto beds so we could all spend the night. I have this one memory of waking up and a cousin was watching Barbie.  There's that one time we decided to climb the cherry tree by climbing the roof. Everyone was scratching after that. But we made our juice. That hammock that would be on the front porch was one of the best things ever. Everyone fighting to get a turn or all of us just trying to pile on together. ...