I think about how you’re a vision of my past
Ever so semi-permanent
I’m walking down the street
And I see a parchment-colored bullfrog
Skin wilted thin
A parchment-colored snail
Shocking passersby till dead from its stillness
It’s a brown napkin
Author: Mattie Grace Levy
I'm a black woman, a classically trained oboist, a self-taught composer, and an introspective poet trying to comprehend my thoughts.
Coping
When I finally have the chance to breathe
I can’t stop thinking about
The way you see me
Inverting previous admonitions
From condescension to care
I wonder if I too am inverted
If the miles between us
Cloud your words
Making fickle mist with every breath
You see me
Painted like a desert
Wrapping on the edges
Yelling to you
As you turn away
You got tired of hearing me
You used to reach inside
And hold me
And now you don’t even watch
You listen to my ramblings with slight acknowledgments
And when the slightest words catch your attention
You turn away
Sustaining
We give up the best of ourselves
For another’s thrill
We wring ourselves dry
So another can drink
Somehow we find solace
In limp wrinkled cloth
Navigation
Lessening my pace
So I can see you in front of me
Changing my stride
So that you can walk past me
Checking my words so that you can respect me
I want you to notice me
Hear me
See me
But I become invisible
To stay safe
Strange Fruit After Billie Holiday
Your limbs are tendrils
Flailing in protest offbeat
to the beat of hearts
Working
to understand
your speech.
Seek the neverending sending of messages that
teach upstanding misunderstanding of
Your hair and why it crinkles
So early after water stipples hit
Freshly
Burned
Skin
Cells that work against it
Turn you thick to sense it
Coming
Before
The wind
Your reaction
Almost human
Flesh
always brazen to the thought of the world we’re in.
