Miss Carried.

Under an ocean...
beneath the image of a godess sans wings,
with fingers laced and beaded wrists...
there were pearls bleading from those slits.

There were purple buds blossoming between the lines of poetry,
and mis-conception.
She was horribly beautiful,
with open locks stranded somewhere behind the faucet...
with alabaster legs carved open in red ink;
she was miss carried-away-by-her-dreams...
and then she was miss-carried-away...
and then...

There was a future in her womb,
time constraining itself to the course
of a stray umbilical chord,
contorting the salty stone of her limbs
until puppet strings lifted fingers lined with sandpaper to mold the moon
gently,
lovingly,
to the contours of her distended belly.
She starved,
but for love,
and she flung her sanity like a halo to the stars
and prayed for wide eyes that always had room for forgiveness
and hands that longed to be held.

...This is what happens when men take advantage of the treasure they believe in...

...And it happens more than careful, greedy fingers
plucking at the hem of dark kente cloth
until the very fabric of nature unravels
and man is only too proud to rape her...

...And man is never cautious enough to leave his shoes at the door.
He stomps them into her spine,
his words,
his hatred,
the drivel of his steaming saliva
washing away the magestically twisted riddles
carved so lovingly,
painted with the glowing dusk
and a child's sweet tears
into the fold of her back.
See, if he leaves his footprints where the world can see
than no new found sense of afrosentricity
could wipe away the welcome-mat-sooty-chain-link-scar
like unwanted graffiti,
or a logo
branded by corporate skid-mark sticks
where the diamonds marking her thighs used to be.

...There are just too many ways to disgrace a homeland...

Yet...
hatred can also bear the seed of redemption.
And so she walked with care,
salt-water wounds
puckering to the sound of simplicity
in the tiniest of roiling thunders,
in the largest of impacts one can dedicate to the sky before the light hits.

So she carried...

But.

With doors left open
and empty rooms ransacked and wrecklessly abandoned...
...Strings once conducted but left limp and dripping...
...Words littering clay-river-bed lips,
unwavering
and slightly numb
from the kiss of stale air...
...With heartache impossible to feel,
anymore...
She
is Miss Carried...

...And she is no more.