droplets of salty sweat glide down my torso,
tickling my identity, the one I’ve made so cozy.
Safely tucked away in the suburbs outside the nation’s capital,
I sit on these droplets of ponderings of should I’s, could I’s and I must’s
while you stand outside, pandemic thriving, screaming a tidal wave of decrees into that megaphone in your hand, shattering glass capitals, screaming for reparation, rectitude, recompense,
salty sweat dribbles down my forehead,
collecting atop my eyelids, a heavy weight forcing my eyes shut
burning memories and deliberation into my vision.
though I am safe in my single family, American Dream home,
though you may question my motives because of the person I lay with
though your words they sink inside, drowning the deliberation at times,
with the weight of these beads nestled on my eyelids, I press my eyes open,
see what I cannot unsee, deliberate the only way I know how.
This pen I have: it is a tiny thing of ink; it crafts and crafts and revises and listens, and takes your sinking words, uses them for fuel. This pen I have she writes. She writes, breaks through the jagged brick walls of that cozy suburban identity that is safely tucked away in a cul de sac of American Dreams.
For my dreams do not matter, while yours are continuously threatened.
For my eyes cannot rest, while yours are continuously told to look the other way.
For my heart will not fill, will not pound, will not beat inside my chest,
while yours lies on the asphalt throbbing for, pumping blood into, holding up a nation that beats you down over and over.
