What lies behind a doorway to nowhere?
Is that question the reason why we keep it closed?
Do we hide the answer from ourselves or just the people who wonder out loud?
And if that's the truth, then do the unasked questions build up in our heads until we can't think and our vision goes foggy and our jaws can't open?
We should open the door.
It's not so bad to be curious.
At least not as bad as their fists tell our skulls it is.
The bruises don't make me afraid to break rules that have been imprinted on my chest like hot metal shapes pressed against pale skin.
"Nowhere" isn't a place, is it? It's a people. I realized that as I wrote in my composition book this morning. I was spelling the word "fear" with my eyes because I lost my voice. I guess it's wrong to say I lost my voice, if I really never had one to begin with. I was born with a limp in my speech and a lisp in my walk because of what's between my legs and apparently I'm lucky because my great grandmothers weren't allowed to vote, and I am. I don't think letting them vote was the solution to the real problem, but what I think doesn't matter, because what they think is what's most important.
Thank God they can't understand my poetry. They read it with slits for eyes and a craned neck because my words don't make sense to them. I've learned to keep my notebooks closed, just like my legs.
I don't know what lies beyond a doorway to nowhere, but I do know that whatever it is, I won't be the one to find it. I'll be here, in my space, waiting. I could never get tired of hearing my own voice. In my head, of course, because I haven't lost that one yet.
-GS
YOU ARE READING
Once Upon a Rhyme
PoetryThis is not a poem, it's a cry for help This is not a poem if it can't be felt This is not a poem for you to tell This is my poem. This is my hell. This will be the end of me This is the sway of the willow tree This was the way that you looked at me...
