Though wrinkled,
her certificate is intact in her safe.
She had failed to find a job
with her degree in zoology.
Her hands smell of the dried prawns,
which she sells in a bamboo basket.
People pity her unmarried loneliness.
But nobody knows her old spring.
Her secret lover’s canoe zigzagged
at midnight.
Erotic ecstasy seeped from her soul.
It was not a velvet bed
that created orgasm.
When she had bathed in the canal,
a sweet sensation surfaced
from the scratches on her back.
On the lap of her orphanhood,
there wasn’t any social poisoning.
She grew up human.
But her maverick growth is loathsome
in her society.
She is always laid-back.
Fortitude is an antidote to snag.
She adheres to hope in the umbra.
That mossy headstone is nonsense,
she muses.
Even if she digs too deep,
she won’t find her dad.
She hasn’t read any holy books.
Death is never a frightening furnace.
Now she sprawls on the floor of her hut,
longing to be recycled through the mist.
The finalist poem in the Stephen A.DiBiase Poetry Contest 2024.
Reviews
No reviews yet.