Duplexity
Two story high
One exposed; one hidden.

Complexity
Through Seven Corners
Seven exposed openings of emotions.

Flexibility
Two sets of clothings
When they are not looking.

          Responsibility
Looking at the mirror
Hidden shadows on the face.

Agility
Balancing all life
Holding a baby while slipping.

I was the next car at the stop sign
When the SUV infront of me made a right turn
It was my turn to stop.

I stopped and looked right and left
But something made me look straight ahead
At the grassy mound in front of me.

As my heart skpiied a beat
My lips turned into a smile
My eyes sparkled at what I saw.

Two lovers sitting on the grassy mound
As the sun played on their faces
Without a care in the world.

As their world was bound in safety
In the insanity of the circle of love
That they wrapped each other with their arms.

I took a deep drink of that glimpse of beauty
As the cars honked behind me
I made a right turn to go home.

I was called an alley child
Eating out of trash cans and soup kitchens
I ran drugs back and forth
To homes that fed me from their trash cans.

I was called the demon child
Fighting my folks back as they locked me out
I broke into a neighbors house
For some warmth coming from the stove.

I was called the prostitute child
Offering sex when the trash cans had no food
I pleasured men and women for money
When the drugs ran out.

I was called the foster child
Running away from one home to the next
I fell through the cracks as big as the scar
From my head to my chest; beaten and stitched.

Sometimes I lay awake staring at the sky
Finally figuring out that the child in me
Never had a childhood at all, as I get out of bed
And kiss my kids still asleep in their beds.

She was driven one dawn by her folks
To one of those secret houses
Where daffodils and pansys grow in the spring
From the outside a swing on the porch.

Oh so young, so unfortunate, so criminal
Chanted the people on the pavement
As the sun broke through the sky
And the cars started going to work
Chanters gathered with jars of aborted fetuses.

She gritted her teeth shut the chanters out of her mind
Then she swallowed some pills
As the nurses drugged her veins
Her folks on the outside in hushed tones
Plotting her escape after this one day of her life.

Flash lights and the chanters gather aware of her escape
Photographed forever in newspapers the headline read
Oh so young, so unfortunate, so criminal
The chanters throwing eggs and paint on her daddy’s car
Her mother bewildered and beserk with fright.

She screamed back at the headlines as her neighbors gosspied
Walk a mile in my shoes, bleed a minute in my toes
Let me hand you my burden I bear forever
As the statutory rapist escapes through the crack in the law
Who are you to judge when my momma’s womb judges not?

Deserters replace the chanters as one by one they leave
Confirming her to eternal damnation
A mark of history and polity on her forehead
Oh so young, so unfortunate, so criminal
A punishment her folks accept for the sake of survival.

She looses herself in depression and despair
And watches her folks abandon her emotionally
Some things are just better not talked about
Like that one day of life and death
She screams in her head, fists clenched and raised.

The Principal replace the deseerters and she is not allowed
To go back to school and sit with her friends
Listen to her teachers in awe and inspiration
As they watched her walk out the gates they exclaimed aloud
Oh so young, so unfortunate, so criminal.

Her veins pop out as she screams out loud
Left alone, her folks somewhere about and around
She does not let them hear her scream
As the kitchen knife came in handy while she slit her throat
Blood squirting the ceiling making the sky red.

They rushed her to the hospital but she died along time ago
As they took her body into emergency, cold and bloody
Her folks devoid of any emotions so the chanters tell them
Oh so young, so unfortunate, so criminal
On that one day of life and death in her fourteenth spring.