Mojo Coffee Gallery

In the final 30 days, my white grandfather was alive. He was a sugar cube in hot water, slowly dissolving under the gravity of Lou Gehrig's. Embedded, bedridden, and imprinted onto a hospital mattress, he would roll over to my grandmother and he would say, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I should have treated you better. I'm sorry. And because he had the privilege to know he was going to die in just days to come, he had the otherworldly power to look her directly in the soul and give her the full body truth. On the deathbed, man, I don't know if I'm going to have regrets See because I come from a long line of men that gave their world, their liver, and their love or their hearts. They knew that to finish a race, they would have to do a song and dance just to start. And that making things right sometimes came with the price of mastering self-sabotage as a habitual art. Stubborn, beautiful, crazy men. And I'm different, right? I'm going to be the one to turn this whole thing around and steer it off into a pristine blue sky. And as the credits roll right after smiles, careen across the faces of audience members, they'll say, ah, what a great love. What a great guy. And what if I'm not? What if I can't? Even worse, what if I won't? Then how'd you Burdened to burdened streets, police with cops and rehearsal to snatch me, stand up between the shaken earth and the fallen sky, swimming in the veins of the beast with the hands of time. Can't make a decent lover if I can't make it decent alive. I got acts of affirmation and words of service and they ain't even on the list of love languages. I just want to give you things Love, respect, laughter, joy, and me. It's worth something, right? In the final three days, my black grandfather was alive. He walked with Jesus and he sat at the dinner table with Banquo with the promise to the family that he was through with drinking. But little did they know you can be through with booze, but that doesn't mean it's through with you. Whether we muzzle flash or fade slow, he was at least able to show he was capable of resisting the poison that taking hold in the end. You see, we all got a certain amount of drink tickets in our lifetime and he had run out over a decade ago. I don't want to be that late with you, but I will go out with conviction. You see, because I come from a long line of broken windows that don't mind we'll never be put back together again, because there's more pride and authenticity in being a pile of jagged pretty pieces closer to our roots sand than to be made into a whole slab of glass from somebody else's image to complete their house. I come from a long line of people that are flawed, destroyed, raped, murdered, monetized, suffocating, but yet still clawing, curdling to hold the next person just a little bit higher. I may not be on time for you, but I will die for you. Don't wait for me, because I'm already here. I'm unfinished.