Shade and shelter.. thinking of u.

Magnolias, Nasturtiums and Red Oaks
If I could write my wrongs,
to correct what you believe is right;
I would right your blue skies gray.
Scribble over the ball of fire
you call your sunshine
and create a starless night.
I don’t want to leave you in darkness,
only allow you a chance to use
your instincts to find your way home.
Punch holes through your loose leaf dreams,
to shower you in confetti truth.
Not one lie he has ever spoken
has been true to your story,
a stanza in your poem,
or the subject
of any sentence that makes sense;
except the life sentence he
has placed upon your soul.
His words sting,
like slaps across your face,
accusations, suffocating
and the stronghold his insecurities
have upon your will;
bruises your arms,
to paint violent shades of captivity.
Sister, you are a canvas,
but there is nothing blank about you.
You are a master piece in the making.
One, God hasn’t completely finished,
And if you don’t believe in God, Buda, Yahweh
Allah, Jehovah, Messiah,
or a f’ing light bulb.
Believe in something,
Anything.
Believe in you.
The Goddess in you knows he is not your Higher Power.
He is not the one to deliver you
from the self imposed prison you allowed
another to build so long ago.
He is just
another slam of the door,
another dead beat lock,
another turn of the key,
just another to strip you of your voice
and color.
I know I should be thinking of myself,
yet I’m wondering about you.
I’m going out of mind,
picking your brain,
like a child amidst spring time flowers
hoping to spread seeds of hope
in the soil of despair and doubt.
Praying each and every time he snatches
you from your foundation,
only to thrush back into the
ground head first,
that someone finds you,
and faces you toward your shine.
Sometimes even the most beautiful things
get swallowed in the darkness,
begin to cast shadows,
and is soon lost in the ugliness of it all.
So, I'm blinking away clouds,
fighting rainstorms,
swallowing her rainbows,
so that one day, my crooked grin
will radiate the vibrant prism
of colors that awaits her.
Pray that my tongue finds the words
to wash away the murky waters that
flood her thoughts.
I want to release her,
so that one day she’ll realize
she was never really swimming,
but drowning.
Recognize that in
my humiliating silence
I drank rancid cups
of minding my business and letting her down.
And the sprinkling of
encouragement, love, and well wishes
didn’t make it any sweeter.
My silence a life jacket
to keep her afloat until
one day she’d reach
the safety of her shore.
Despite the questions she asks of herself,
the answer is “he is no different.”
Simply a different weapon,
but the result is still the same.
Her pain.
Her struggle with self.
Her loss.
If I smoked, I would light a cigarette in her honor.
Allow her, to watch me, watch her,
burn under another's heated pressure.
And as I watch her fire
flicker and smolder,
she burn to ash,
I could only wonder, watch
and pray...


e. zora knight for kdtaylor, 2007
section 8 coffee publications