The Justice Man
It was 1967, and time
to set out on my own.
I was 10 and my mind made up,
determined to do what no black girl,
I ever knew, had ever done,
run away from home, the day before,
Beauty Shop Day.
It was time to sever all ties,
the women at Clyburns laughed
at my cigar thick hair,
they handed me off to each other,
to whosoever hadn't been punished,
by the parting and combing the week before,
there was the burning,
the curling smoke,
the all day teasing of my curly shyness,
my ears were already red enough,
I was tender-headed, a sensitive child,
I'd had enough, before reaching the Dr. Pepper factory
and the railroad tracks,
I felt a car crawling
along behind me,
I wouldn't turn,
it might be time to run.
The sun moved down,
eye-to-eye with my knee socks.
I was tired and had not yet eaten
my Wonder Bread bologna sandwich,
I lost sight of which street
I had turned down, and on every corner,
stood my mother, hands on hips,
her two searching disappointed eyes,
the tires of the car
stopped crunching,
he was walking behind me now,
I could see him in my side eye,
the shadowy outline of our
Madagascan noses side by side in the street,
he never tried to stop me,
never lied to get me to come back home,
"If you gotta go, he said, "remember what
we taught you."
There in his pretty hand
was my school lunch-money handkerchief,
two shiny quarters tightly tied at different angles,
pillared inside the scent of Old Spice cotton.
Sometimes love leads,
Sometimes love follows.
Happy 85th birthday, Daddy.
March 23, 2016
—Nikky