Like-Like
/Wendy M. Thompson
Like Sprite for black people.
Like Saltines after yellow vomit and ice chips.
Like the burgundy carpet in your grandmother’s
old house and the smell of church pews.
Like the wet semicircle in my panties
when you stand too close to me.
Your thigh touching my thigh,
the musk on your jacket.
Imagine all the space between us.
All 40 years filled with bodies &
missed opportunities & mistakes &
mouths that felt so right, so real at the time.
Wide turns in the back seat on the hard leather
upholstery of your grandmother’s LeSabre careening
around a corner and all the kids sliding into each
other and you into the metal door handle.
Her grey wig tight as she leans
forward into the steering
wheel.
We should have asked our people
all our questions then. But what were
we but fully absorbed in our own bony scarred
kneecaps running us down streets full of kids & dogs &
open fire hydrants & ice cream trucks & bigger
kids with older girlfriends and boyfriends?
Where do you come from?
When were you born?
What did the house look like
that you grew up in?
What made you fall in love
with granddaddy?
Why did he leave you?
Was it hard raising my daddy?
What were your dreams like before
your first husband?
Before you got pulled out of
the sixth grade?
Before you began cleaning up
white people’s houses?
Before you left Mississippi-Louisiana?
Like watching boys, sweaty
and shirtless, on the basketball court.
Two years later, those same boys be on
bikes and ATVs outrunning the
police.
Which one was you?
Pointed out in a lineup.
Dragged out during a raid.
Caught in a sweep.
Which one was you?
Still baking,
fermenting,
rising all through
your teens & early
twenties. Caught up &
playing games &
scheming & fucking &
fighting in your thirties.
Which one was
you at 40?
Unlikely
husband material
for a woman who
spent her decades
equally searching &
running. Stealing &
giving away too much.
Eating & starved for
the very thing you
promise me
in excess
now.
Author’s note: I wrote this poem following a traumatic and criminal incident that occurred during the pandemic. One of my children was harmed by their father, an act that broke apart multiple families, forced my child to become a survivor, and sent my ship careening off course into a darkness that I could not outrun and a terrible pain I was forced to carry. Having long fashioned myself as both the captain and the ship of my household, to have both home and family destroyed meant I had to face life without a boat. To drown in open water.
In an attempt to avoid being submerged by tremendous pain and guilt, I went in search of comfort, in search of land, venturing into the world of online dating at the age of 40. There, I would meet a person also born and raised in Oakland, a black man who survived the city through the crack epidemic, municipal abandonment, and police sweeps. We would have a very brief and intense relationship during which our many insecurities, childhood trauma, defense wounds, and survival tactics surfaced, all of these things eventually leading to our breakdown. Before splitting, we would share mouthfuls of stories, reflecting on our parallel and different memories of being young and black in Oakland in the 1980s: Southern grandparents, monstrous fathers and fatherlessness, home cooked meals, the roughness of the streets, the beauty of the skyline, a desire to see the world beyond that we only read about or watched on TV.
This poem encapsulates the early stage of us getting to know each other, imagining us chasing love and shadows of our younger selves.
Wendy M. Thompson is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies at San José State University. Her creative work has most recently appeared in Sheepshead Review, The Account, Funicular Magazine, Palaver, Gulf Stream Lit, and a number of other publications. She is the coeditor of Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion.
