YOU ARE READING

THE TWENTY SECOND YEAR

Poetry

At birth, we are all sentenced to life- to live. Highest Rankings: #4 in poembook #4 in poemcollection © z. t. corley, 2024

#africanamerican #anger #anxiety #beauty #belonging #childhood #creation #cruelty #death #destruction #fear #gentleness #girlhood #grief #identity #language #life #loneliness #loss #poembook #poemcollection #poetry #poetrycollection #selfhood #womanhood

THE TWENTY SECOND YEAR

37 5 1

by UNWILTED

by UNWILTED

                                    
                                              To lose a grandmother like an accent.
To return to the desk, to the notebooks, to the language.
To articulate grief—though barely.
To translate loss—though incorrectly.
To ask for gentleness.
To receive the very opposite.
To ask for the hand of the angel of forgetting.
To receive the hand of the angel of memory instead.
To attempt to relinquish suffering only to take it back again and again.
To take back every complaint, every whine, every petty grudge.
To slaughter resentment.
To reimagine a childhood without disappointment.
To ask again for gentleness.
To ask again for gentleness.
To—again—receive the very opposite.