poetry writing challenge - day 19

write a poem about anger.

weakness


when the neighbor boy, then my best friend,
went down the creek road with me and took
the quail's egg from the weeded nest we'd found together
in the pearl evening the evening before
(before our mother's leaned and called out from a lit door
..."Dinner!"
as I have never heard a mother do since)

he showed me the egg
mottled blue with white - like clouds
and black - like continents or distant sprays of unnamed islands
so sweet, here hold it,
touch it,
it's okay.
see?

and smashed the shell against the hot sidewalk
with what new strength he'd woken with
and chased me away with the wet, sticky, ruined thing
I thought
there are things we do
I will never
- not ever -
understand.

I am not proud I can't get angry
or stay angry long.

I feel broken and ashamed and damned by all of it.
The women, today, - murdered for being raped.

We grow ourselves this way,
augmenting ourselves by crippling,
and crying without effect,
just
it seems
as birds were meant to fly.