In which i mistake ruby from blackish as a family member

Lyrics

i see it in your eyes, ruby. the kids these days know nothing of how it used to be, nothing of wringing the last bit of life out of a warm body in the name of a new meal, in the name of survival. they do not know its either them or us. they do not know of how a man once went missing from your bed for two nights too long, of how you later sat from a distance and watched the flames engulf a mountain of his belongings. you, with your legs crossed and a mug lined with diamonds kissing your lips. you, laughing deep enough to wipe the pictures clean out of their frames and throw two whole decades into the blaze. at least you controlled this one. at least, this time, you could choose which parts of you the heat would claim for itself. and it must not have been easy to take the smoke that filled the block and raise a black man from it; a black man who is unplagued with the troubles of money, who's pockets are now lined with the fruits of the labour you once reluctantly offered while under the weight of a summer in compton. and oh, how the bones do grow old but still will be tested if necessary. oh, how your hips will be forced back into a range it hasn't seen since your younger years if the time comes for you to carry your offspring on your back one last time. who else is left to drag a man back into heaven but the woman who first birthed his whole and dripping body and then wrapped it in the sun's gold? these days, the sun don't gleam like it used to, ruby. sure, i can ask the screen of metal and glowing light in my palms to remind me of how things looked when i was a child, of how the sky once stretched itself above the heads of those i loved and made promises about the morning that it couldn't keep. i could find myself a photo with the face of a young boy whose smile is just as wide as mine once was, his arms wrapped twice around a woman he wants to keep alive at all costs. but instead, i choose to sit here in the glimmer dripping in through the window. i choose to sheath my eyes and let time spin its tall hands and drag its tongue across my cheeks as I am dipped back into a moment I can no longer touch with my fingers. i do this because i know there is no honor in forgetting the land from which i came or the arms that kept me tightly tucked to a still beating chest. so tell me again, ruby, about the seventies, and the nothing that came and flooded the hood, how yall made a feast out of it, how yall stretched it till you could sit in a packed church on sunday morning with familiar faces who had no more than you did, at least until the spirit came in and filled your bellies with something to hold you over for one more week: a promise of a blessing perhaps, or a bit of the good word. tell me again about the rattle of the bullets, and how they came for the boys that weren't baptized under something holy, and how you took dre and all his friends and even your triflin ass lover to the chapel on the corner to get their heads dipped in whatever water deacon was willing to say a word over. today, there are still those of us who have not been buried by the hungry years that tried to swallow our names. today, the storm's curtains will finally part their lips and i swear this house will be unscathed. i know this because of the songs we've thrown into the air before dinner all these years. i know this because grammy clenched her fingers into a knot and prayed until her mouth was spilling with tongues, and then spoke of salvation in all of our languages at once. and ain't this enough of a spell to keep anything or anyone you love in one piece? we can still make a feast out of the things, once living, that the night dragged into dawn, at least until we stare into the eyes of something more eager than us to stay alive. and don't that deserve a hallelujah? ain't all of this worthy of bit of praise? grammy told me to give praise for everything, including the silver hairs of lightning that cracks across the dark of midnight; how each strand was laid by God's gifted hands. but even God's bones get the shakes once in awhile. how else do you explain the way death and its greedy fingers somehow find its way to our necks? ​ ruby, i am trying to say that God could have blinked and I would have been your son; would have been birthed from the cloud of smoke hovering above los angeles instead of the salty earth of my island. so tell me again, when you were in the place where all the aunties come from, did you see any of mine? did you often speak their names? did you all learn to sharpen your weapons and point them at those bold enough to step up to the plate? did you all learn that the spilling of blood is fair game if it means the night sky keeps our names out its wide and unworthy mouth?