old. Thursday, July 09, 2009

i met you on street corners, in alleyways where the light danced on your liquored breath. i was young, too young to follow you and still small enought to want to fit myself inside your pocked, hoping you wouldn't notice i was there so i could stealthily memorize your scent. i never saw the inside of your home, never met the woman you slept with and the one i should probably call stepmother. i met you on the porch or in the driveway, school fundraiser clenched to my fist and sticking to my sweaty palm, begging you to help me reach my goal. i met you on the avenues where you and my mother would scream until your voices were indistinguishable. i never met you for a test, though i'm sure i would have if i'd asked for anything more than that fundraiser blood money. i can't even say that i wanted you to love me. but after you were locked away for defending someone the way you'd never defended me, i told you that all those years, all those times i met you in alleyways, in moonlight, on street corners where the light shone on mhy inability to make you acknowledge me were the only reminders i had of you. i sent you a recital of my accomplishments like spelling them out for you, telling you that i could do all these things without you, that my hunger for life and words didn't begin with you and your silence and absence damn sure wouldn't end it.i wrote it down into a four page- front and back- womanifesto so that you could not see how much i needed you then to help me become less jaded, to put feeling in my limbs because, really, they were an extension of you and they extended constantly toward you and that bottle in your hand.

© 2009 Marcea L. Brown. All rights reserved.