It’s all been done and said and felt before; what’s left for you?
Your whole life has been spent moralising, considering, telling yourself why your instincts are wrong.
You’ve taken open mindedness to its extreme, pushed up the sliding pane so far the AC doesn’t even matter anymore; it’ll never compete with the breeze dusted with crumbly spores and insect larvae that land on the sill – bursting, staining with yelloworangebrown juices your pristine thoughts which used to come only in white.
But to emerge is to see that you found all your expression tucked in the stack of library books about blue-eyed girls who eat corn pone and dance with witches;
And in the bloodstained melodies we sang as kids to cleanse our souls;
Or wrinkled in the pocket of the salmon-colored dress your grann made for your manman, which she gave to you before you were grown enough to wear it.
The scraps you found and sewed together even when they didn’t match
And wrapped a quilt around your shoulders that the world looked at and called interesting
Exotic, but relatable
A+ Excellent
Awful
Almost Chinese
Too sharp
Fucking beautiful
Angel
Used bloody rags
Not a threat
Not quite what we’re looking for
So no, it isn’t the responses you want, you’d rather not know what they think
What’s left is the way you feel and (heads up, a moral)
That’s worth keeping away from the window
Even if only for a little while before the wind blows
And words get crumpled up in shame and forgotten till they’re smoothed flat on the tongue of your curly-haired daughter as she twirls in the salmon-colored dress she found in the back of your closet.