For Denzel Who Did Graduate
There is a choking hot panic
Rabbit speed
That floods me with shame and sorrow and the metal taste of failure
Then anger
Your face
People you may know
One mutual friend
The teacher that could rise above
Who wrote for your clemency
Who could get past
The fuck yous
And the gun you held up as a kid
To other kids
Around the corner
From your corner.
And to know that the last decade of hard love
I've given to class
After class
After class
After class
After class
After class
After class
Wasn't enough for you or for me
To forgive you for the choices you made
Had to make?
And I resent the years of friendship and living and hollerin' and eating and softness that belong to you too.
You're doing instead
With men
And metal toilets
And nobody to hold your hand.
And I resent all the slobbering machines that put you in their path,
Your bones ground to powder the moment your brown face was born Brookfield.
I, in hope and shame,
wonder if this is the door you'll open to prudence and measured steps -
Needles of swimming doubt slosh
wondering if this is the acid building up in your cells, your thickened neck, your long eyelashes
That will burn brighter and hotter.
My tea is cold now.
And my sight congeals with scalding tears
And wonder about
If learning to read would've changed a thing.
