The secret is, you are a force. You think you’re normal.
You’re not. You were born with momentum.
Before the light-void opened in the pre-birth dawn,
you backed up and got a running start. Spilt out of that door,
into a midwife’s clutch, and asked for pearl earrings and a purse,
so adults take me serious.
You recite whole newspaper articles at dinner,
while dancing beside your chair. you write stories
‘til you’re hoarse and sweaty, like your pen is pacing
the cage of your 11-year-old mind. You know how to lie,
but don’t see the point. You ask for bus fair, in a town with no buses,
because you found out negroes could enter libraries in New York.
Little Girl, one day, long from now, you’ll turn 13.
Puberty’s furtive spell will descend like Eve’s sudden flush.
You’ll know you’re weird, you’re raw, you’re different.
Someone will advise something about quiet confidence
and you’ll listen. You’ll laugh in spoonfuls,
a hand flying up to trap the bellow. You’ll hug piddling pitty-pat
hugs, talk in slips and slithers, dream in practicality.
Little Girl, you cannot be small. You cannot unbloom.
You cannot de-erupt. Your volume is pre-set. You cannot unbirth.
It’s suicide. You cannot seek shelter in the insecurities of others.
The solace they get from your compromises is temporary
and renew by the minute. Your concessions add
to the overrun population of creatures of the commonplace.
Little Brown Girl, levitation is a habit, like the way you
hum yourself awake or chew mint before crossing thresholds
you are prophetess of the handclapping games
divine blackboard cipherer, big word speller,
diva of jump rope and jacks. You are God’s right hand girl.
You report to Her every night. You are incomprehensible.
You are the speed of light.