mirrors
How do I look in a mirror when
everything is distorted?
How do I see when stars and stripes
wrap around my nappy hair and cause
me to lose my vision, my dreams?
I can't smell if the stench of blood is in
the air.
I can't taste if the mouths of my
brothers and sisters are silenced.
How do I feel? How do I stumble blindly
in this world where everyone can see but me?
the darkness has been pierced too many times by an object
meant to defend us if necessary.
My senses are muted, stomped on and diminished.
One by one we go.
Forces
My fingers dig into the cold earth
Turned it loose
And I saw a worm gently scratching the surface, crawling, crawling along
I stopped gardening
I stopped thinking of the two dollar ice cream churning in my stomach
I stopped thinking of the likes my picture got
I stopped thinking of the love I could have not
And I watched it crawl
And I realized that the inner world of that worm,
the dirt it was crawling on, the places it meant to go, the places it meant to go without a
thought as to who might be in it’s way...
Was not entirely dependent on its outer world: me.
Well, how about that.
We human beings, we big clunky slow moving forces,
They aren’t entirely dependent on us.
About the author: Louise Ba was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota and still resides there. She is a junior at The Blake School and is very passionate about the arts. Her works have been published in Flash magazine, and Spectrum newspaper (both based at The Blake School) as well as The Bluffton Literary Journal.
