I Plan To Be Saved
And I’ve filled myself up
with images of beauty. Dirty and forgotten about
I sit three red carnations on my chipped windowsill in early February,
wait for word that new life will find me.
Before my eyes die and my body comes to permanence.
Before the wrong man fucks me and leaves me child full.
Before my head stops pounding with fear of the same.
In some ghetto or suburbia some white or brown some faith or rebellion
streetlights will flash me the signals on wet black
roads heading a way I’ve never been.
My hands will be in control. My thighs will lead the way.
I’ve waited twenty-six years to be saved and burned.
And in six years I have changed.
In six movements I can
explain my life:
I felt him move and then he was done.
I wanted a child and then knew I was never a mother.
I tried to fall to pieces and fingernail away my skin and grow my thighs thick for attention.
I lifted a pen, knew what a writer was, drank wine and was done.
I slept in an unmade bed and forgot to make my life.
I waited another year for answers to find their way to me.
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