"The Children"

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Sometimes I dream of a slave ship docking at port

& my grandmother has brought me here. She takes my hand

(in the dream I am very young) as we watch the children

disembark. The children are lithe & descend one after

another after another—squinting, lifting their hands to shield

their eyes from the burning light of this new country.

I ask her: But will they be loved? She rubs my head &

says: The lack of it isn’t the worst thing to happen

to them. Think of all the ways what is not love comes for us,

sometimes parading itself as obligation, or the violence

we bear & soon they won’t distinguish one from the other.

The hurt itself will be a kind of attention. A boy hears

us talking & stares right back at me. He is black, blacker

than anyone I’d ever seen—iridescent, glowing with it.

I’m so moved that I dart between the guards toward him

& hold him in my arms & where I touch him, feathers

grow. The boy sprouts wings & lifts from the earth.

We are transfixed—me & grandmamma & children & the guards-

gazing upward. At first, he careens away, then back toward us

only to ascend, blacking out the sun until he climbs

high enough that he is swallowed by it altogether.

-- END --

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Image from Google
Poetry Credit

Thank you to read, With love from @radhikapatel