TO THE BULLIED
It was just two of us and she had green eyes,
green eyes laced with colour of water.
She was the lady with the tourette and I,
I was the one who needed to stop eating.
I was the size of three boys and I just didnt fit.
I never understood the laughter. No, I couldn't.
Everyday became another reason to cower into
face of
the sand.
It wasn't a question. They had no God in them.
We had learn and unlearn the ways
to keep silent when the boys speak to us.
They wanted no reply.
Our words were yet another hand trying to fit in a pant.
My locker became a home for dead rats
and her hair a house for egg yolks and yeast.
She had run to me in the day and
speak in a tone that
seems to be begging for
attention and protection.
"Promise, just hold me and let me close my eyes.
Hold my ears,
drown this laughter in the walls of your arms,
let them fade in there."
With one arm, I had hug her tight and
with the other, cuddle her head into my chest and
sob silently into her curly hair.
The eggs had hit my back and I had held her still.
I heard the jests, the shouts, the hoots and boos but
I had close my eyes too and listened away for the rain.
listened to the crash of raindrops.
While they ran their rich asses to safety,
we prayed silently to the drops,
that they might wash our pains away.
suprising how pouring-waters could be a
home for two lost children.
No one could understand how,
how the rain became the only miracle we had.
Now, I have stopped counting the number of meals that
had become food for stones and dust,
how I had sat in the toilet to eat away with fingers while
fellowshiping with the fector and the flies that in a way
proved more loving than the boys.
How I had managed to love a woman
and protect what was mine at a tender age of seven.
How I fell in love for all the wrong reasons and
most of all,
how I taught myself to give up.
