Lines composed today
after I met this lady in wig
She wears her copper wig
And walks up the Harlem hill
In pain and bright colored clothes
Enters the subway station
One step at a time alone
And knows how to catch
The train of her thoughts
When memories rush.
No one taught her, her first words.
She learned from streets
How to get home from work
When she was only a teenager
And the night was howling cold
And home was a place as cold
With a drunkard stepfather
Who was kind enough to rape her
No more than once a year.
She never went to school to learn
How to be a single mother
How to raise a first generation
College kid; How to pay the bills
--Schools teach about life, not life--
But these spaces at the mall
Where shoppers pee and shop spree
Are spick and span after she leaves.
Each day she rises before the sun
In the tanned tone she was born
With her clear mind
She sets the alarm for her son
Wears her wig and climbs the hill
Takes a deep breath at every step
And smiles.
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