santos scribes

you have a way with words
she said once, in earnest

but all the words I ever spoke back then were all the words I knew she’d like to hear

so really it was the words who were having their way
with
me

through trial
and mostly error,
I have discerned most people would rather not
look at
or
listen to
a grown woman chart and bellow the sounds misscapes of their
missing cords, their
heartless
heart
songs wonders

it
becomes
shameful
somehow
the older I get

like watching an elderly man shop for dented cans and bruised peaches
in the back corner of an empty grocery store

but it was the grocery store

with all that poise and promise

whose check out counters full

of food & cash

first called out to me

called out to me as I watched from the parking lot of my foster mother’s hand,
my father fumble & dig through costumer’s trash out front

it was the storefront of that moment
and all the escaping air that encased it
that whispered clearly:

you are not most people

you will never be most people

so why not write your silly songs,
in their melancholy minor
they may be the only thing that will ever come to slow the bleeding
.
.

about this poem

as a young girl i witnessed my father digging through a trash can for food outside of a grocery store i was about to enter with my foster mother. it had a profound and lasting effect on me.