From Proof

I came here when I was six -

I was dark skinned in a thin dress and I loved my grandmother - and she raised me with my three sisters who still stand waving me goodbye -

I was the first to come to England, and when I arrived, I knew - I knew - something had happened to me - I knew that what I saw in the mirror had been darkened, differently arranged - when I looked at myself in my new coat and boots I saw - I saw - something like a net that catches death -

I was the child of two strangers with my last name - who bathed me - scrubbed me with the seawater at the bottom of their lives -
two ghosts rubbing soap on my shoulders -
two dead people in their house clothes telling me to wash my neck -

I feel - I feel like I have to hold on - and say - and say -
I don't want to die in this country - let me die with my grandmother -
I want to be rotted by the sun -
and I want her shadow to fall along my body -
and I want to be shaded by her grief -
and I want the dogs to hanker for my bones -
I want to be eaten by worms and become an ackee tree -
lord, I said - I said it in such a whisper
I could have put the ground to sleep -

don't let me die in England I said to the pavement -
to the sea-black rain -
and never tell my grandmother why I never called -
never called to say that I thought of her daily -
that I suffered with the weight of what she had freely given -