travel

Navigating

A girl . . standing . . . on the sidelines . . . watching a parade . . . of family . . . a celebration of sorts
Sunday evening . . . after church . . . weekly ritual of gathering . . . those that belong . . . as opposed to those who do not
Women . . . fixed . . . in-between . . . sharing . . . dreaming . . . and watching
Do they see the little girl standing on the sideline?
Can they hear her thoughts?
She sees them . . . notices cat rimmed glasses . . . the a-line skirt . . . uncomfortable curves shifting . . . in preoccupation . . . small dialogues . . . interchanging ideas of smallness . . . small talk . . . nothing important beyond that moment
They look past the girl . . . speak to someone else . . . feel for themselves . . . in selfish pursuit . . . feigning empathy for the world . . . the girl watches . . . realizing her otherness . . . standing . . . alone . . . unafraid . . . recognizing the materialism in trying to defy nature . . . navigating its eclipse . . . feeling confident
She watches life . . . then integrates into it . . . taking a step forward . . . her momentous moment . . . transitioning . . . a single synchronicity . . . in alignment forward . . . in time . . . moving toward a future . . . telling a story . . . her story . . . a waxing . . . or waning . . . a wanting . . . as the moment of a reckoning passes.

The Root of It 

Whispers speak of secrets
Mentioned ... not to be heard
But traveling down the ear
Through a secret thread meant to hurt,
A judgment in pointed words
Pushing narcissus'
Delusions at its root
Refusing any claim to guilt.

The chin-wag venomous
Digs, push false confines, in  
Name of righteous art, as
Their toads kill ingenuity
With calculated turmoil,
Nicknamed allyship
denying their bigoted
Fear-based gossip.

Lies they tell themselves lace
Target darts to stab
Deep. Censuring voices
Deemed enemies of truth.
Denial is easier
Then facing forgiveness,
As they lift misaligned swords
Thrusting in righteous defenses.

Quietly, while the pain
Fights to understand the wound, 
I see them
in their skewed injurious courts,
Guised as collaborators
loathing otherness
if it doesn't look like themselves.

The continued hush-hush
Whisperings inure that pain
In opaque gloss veneers
That cannot be breeched, making me 
More resolved in transforming
the ossified rootless truths
into grace with enough-as-enough 
posturing to raze the root of it.