so much slander
is ****** upon the poet,
who sits uncomfortably
at the tip of every tired pen
aspiring to run out of ink

she will suffer
for as long as our streets
remain flooded with the blood of the innocent,
for as long as our wrongful hands
desire to invent new ways to tighten the ropes
of our own expired dreams, hanging exhaustedly
around the same necks
that have since forgotten how
to support us

and because of this,
the poet will sob
violently, the way she prayed
to destroy the sight of her own words
sinking down the clogged drain
in her bathroom sink

how willingly it swallowed
every remnant of everything
she could never bring herself
to understand

from the thunderous sound
of her father's kind footsteps
escalating the stairs after a long day
that will leave his back stiff,
to the absence of her mother's voice
the moment she finally decided
to listen

pain, she thought,
is a remembered affliction

and it is the poet's sin
if she refuses to shelter it.