dear maud
It certainly cannot be easy
To have the world’s sharp glance turned toward you,
to resist adopting those eyes as your own
when it’s ingrained in you
that those eyes,
worth dollars more
than the tab paid by a stranger
never having the right of way
sometimes never even offered the light of day,
yet you stay – yes, you must
it’s virtue of patience
by virtue from Grandma
yet you tire of waiting
for it is in spite, in fact and because of this,
that survival
kindled a belief in some kind of beauty
that yields sight
of the odd kind of a blessing it is,
to lack a social currency underlying it all –
seeing what the world cannot,
without seeing,
you see the world in a way it cannot
by being in a world without
a proper place for being
without being,
you be what the world cannot
*Inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha