The Runaway

Despite horrible treatment

The lack of acceptance care

The threats

Giving away all I stand to inherit

Despite the lies

passing for white

The hatred towards Black women and girls

in specific me

Despite the competing

The constant need to feel better than me

at tremendous cost

Despite the selfishness

Lack of generosity

Never in my life receiving 5 dollars

Except on Christmas maybe

Despite the mental illness

The lack of responsibility by almost everyone including her

I kind of secretly still admire my mother

That still amidst all

She still creates her enemy

Still creates an escape

The only lessons of merit she gave were

her black and blue bruises

The advice not to let it happen to me

Get an education she’d say

Throughout all my father’s beatings

She always kept a blue suitcase

I’m leaving she’d say

Though she never did

The last twenty years she believes there’s a man

who robs her daily steals food clothes jewelry

Takes the knobs off drawers

Destroys plants

She says I’m moving

I’ve got to get away

I think of my mother still

As one of the slaves I most admire

The ones who took freedom into their own hands

Would not accept the yoke

Daily she plans an escape

Even if it’s dream or delusion

My mother is a runaway.