Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 May 2014 elizabeth capital
Maeve
Fly
They released the paper planes 
And watched curiously with the stopwatch to measure 
How long they flew 
How far they went 
Even the paper planes had more consciousness of where they were going 
I was lost 
I was stuck in the air 
A sky unfamiliar to me 
A mere few feet from the ground 
But unable to hit the surface 
Trailing along 
Wondering when the wind would stop 
The paper planes had landed
When would I?
Thought I could
do this on my own.

I was really wrong.

You used to care.

But, then you
started dating him.

He made you
choose him over me.

I used to come to you in pieces..

*So you could make me whole.
Broken as a
                      stubbed
toe

Lines broken off
                             in the
    wrong
                      place

Falling
                 into
     what            would
                  be
                           love  
       if
                anything
    existed
at
           all.
I am in a desert town
Standing on the mountaintop
alone
Lonely growing up in a too-big house
seeing the world from behind the smeared glass of a
tour bus
while an automated voice drills in
objective truths
about culture
about what the Other's color of skin makes
them.

Being told to give money because God said so
Being told my daddy up in heaven loved me
whether he showed up or not
and I had to just
believe
and obey
Him.

I'd rather turn away
from that sunny desert sky, because it
burns
I'd rather jump off the bus
so I could stop feeling so ****
sick
and forget about what the color of my skin
makes me.
I'd rather not live to serve a god I don't
know
and never met
and a family who has never met me.

To be called a fellow person
rather than a tourist or
patron.
Because I know what it is to be patronized.
 May 2014 elizabeth capital
r
My ink may run
as black as coal,
as dark as
a dark night
of the soul.

Or flow red hued
like the morning sky;
as red as love,
or red man's blood
on hard-baked clay.

Yellow ink hues
my many suns,
my moons
the color of
dry bone.

Blue-inked waves
may wash my
blues away,
or sing the blues as blue
as muddy waters.

Gray ink clouds
on a fog-shrouded
empty highway
take me from here
to the Blue Ridge
mountains.

White-capped sailors
sail the arctic
as lost as
my white ink
on a blank page.

r ~ 5/13/14
\•/\
   |
  / \
the clouds
spread their
black and
orange trimmed
butterfly wings
performed a
sacred firedance
upon the eyes of
the golden sun
all because
clouds have wings
Next page