How to Leave the Girl Behind
       

Becoming yourself means leave-taking, means reinventing, means self-immolating. You mean to fight your way out of your rigid, glistening chrysalis. You digest the worm that is your self and from the soup you pull your eyes, newly sighted, and wings, antennae. Becoming yourself means flying, means running, means rounding corner after cutting corner, means slamming. Slamming doors that shut fast on the past and open up to poetry and song. You wrench words from somewhere deep. Words explode onto your page, words burst from your lips. Words buried in vaults, words hidden in hollows of shame, words that air the soil of secrets to the cleansing light of day. Words that reignite your mother's distress, your father's wrath, your sisters' rage. Disappointment and dishonor all around. You write lyrics to rap songs, staccato punches that reverberate with anger, sorrow, truth. You write poems of anguish and celebration. You slam in dark dodgy East Village basements. You write torch songs that fuse the fiction of your imagination and the reality of your torn, almost beautiful life. You sing in Bowery lounges that stink of beer and the press of flesh. You sing, you test your brand new wings. You write. You write like you're running out of time, like you're Alexander Hamilton reimagining your country from ground zero up. You build a world. You put the pieces of the broken one back together. You are mother. You are partner. You are nightingale. You are red bird rising, leaving ashes at your feet.

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Copyright © 2021 Deborah Kahan Kolb All rights reserved
from Escape of Light
Finishing Line Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission