BY KHALISA RAE
Tea Party at the Cemetery
We built a haunting in the silent spaces,
buried a living thing in my childhood baby dolls
and music box ballerinas’ splitting their limbs to stay
in step, Dancing Bear books and ice skates rest
on the shelves now covered in dust just
wanting to rest, but the rot keeps them up.
We buried a breathing thing here—
a coffin for each memory we didn’t dare
dig up. Spirits lurking
around every pageant queen trophy
and all the trinkets we used to convince her she
was a girl, innocent girl. A jewelry box filled
with twenty years of secrets. Things no one
dared to tell.
This door has been locked and shut;
a locket on the dresser to remind us that memories
are best kept away and private.
Photographs of me smiling, but wanting to
shutter and run. No one could tell
I was waiting for the day to escape the porcelain faces,
the Minnie Mouse pink patterned sheets and curtains,
The repetitive tv static and terror that only
resides in my head now.
I remember my 17th birthday,
how I was so ready to run free
from the carousels and tutus,
run away from the thought of home.
I peeked inside my room for the last time
before leaving; I could have sworn I saw
them all dancing, drinking tea
on the graves.
Khalisa Rae is a native of North Carolina and is a graduate of the Queens University MFA program. Her recent work has been seen in Glass Poetry, Brave Voices, Hellebore, Honey & Lime, Tishman Review, the Obsidian, Anchor Magazine, New Shoots Anthology, Red Press, Roses Lit, among others. She was a finalist in the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize and a winner of the Fem Lit Magazine Contest, White Stag Publishing Contest. She is staff editor for Kissing Dynamite and Carve Magazine. Her forthcoming collection, Ghost in a Black Girls Throat is forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2021. She is also the newest writer for B*tch Media and Out/Body Magazine.