More Than A Spinout
By Talicha J.
Our car swerved on the road,
slick with the earths bathwater.
Everything sharpened,
the windshield—-a high-resolution screen,
the colors of the trees,
of everything—-more vibrant,
we were on a rogue merry go round
with no mean kid to blame
for spinning us too fast,
when we landed in the ditch
everything was quiet.
Even the air seemed to tip toe through
my lungs as if barely a panting breath
could startle this luck,
this gift of heartbeat.
We would live to do more than spin out,
be more than a ten o’clock news story
right after the next commercial break!
I’d live to love the boy who would ride shotgun
with the map of my body spread between his palms.
Learn how to call this skin: home,
these bones: the earth,
this mind: a brilliant sky craved by blank canvas.
I would be there to hold my mother’s hand,
hot with fever
as she lay in the hospice bed.
I’d find the words to tell the stories I thought
were only mine but belong to so many others
who need to hear them. There would be
no more time taken for granted
No more wasted potential.
No more spinning out.
About Talicha J
I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan I fell in love with poetry in kindergarten when my teacher, Mrs. Johnson, gave us a poem to read about being five years old and then I remember writing my own version. I was hooked. Of course every thing I wrote back then could be considered elementary (do you see what I did there?) but it was the start. Around the age of eight I decided without a doubt I would become a poet one day even though I had no idea what that meant aside from writing poems about the stray kittens in my backyard.