Poetry

Reclaimed

 

She said she missed being single,

as her curled cupped breasts

pushed up against her camel hair

sweater tight over faded jeans  

that had holes through which shone soulless

kneecaps brimming with scars.

 

Her breath was hoarse and dry from too

many sleepless nights whirling on cocaine

poles with colored lights and grasping

hands and eyes that shone with pure

greed and hopes and faith left at home

with the whims of brooding children.

 

Once, a long time ago, she heard a

sound pounding irresistibly through

her perfect wrists and well-shaped

hands that electrified a spirit she once

listened too but had abandoned to fate

and the church and patrimony, because

her soul could not be saved by pliant

hands and the opiates of sacrifice buried

beneath piety and mesmerizing gongs.

 

Later, when she ditched her man and

recovered her dignity and began the long

chase back to womanhood in earnest.

She realized she had within her the power

to transcend her beauty and the lure of her

ripe plum breasts that forced her to live in

the voluptuousness of other people’s shadows.

Only then was her expanded spirit capable

of hearing the sound of her own true beauty

resonating through the eyelashes of her sequined eyes.