Heads turn at the sound of young black woman’s heels clicking the cold parochial floors,

The ruthless power of her stride swings open solid cross laden wooden doors.

A she sits down in one of the thirty identical school desks she wonders why

 No one listens to her meek sounds.

 

“Stop Looking!” she whispers,

“I’m not anyone special.

Don’t you see me always tripping over myself, making everything a mess,

Saying things left best unsaid.”

 

“Instead,” she hisses,

“You call me “exemplary,” “stellar,” “accomplished.”

Thrusting at me accolades far beyond my effort,

Telling me that I could be the next First Lady, no,

President.”

 

The thought that warms her heart like a toasty blanket  on a winter night,

Her utmost wish up on the highest, lightest white cloud in the clear tear blue sky ,

Is to be known by all

The way she knows herself.

As a girl who still plays patty cake with her friends,

Who dances so recklessly that the wooden floors

 Creak, tremble and break her mother’s treasured ornaments,

And who cries shamelessly at a good old love story.

 

If only one of those heads could turn back and implore the young black woman

With heels that commands the attention of countless heads,
“Can’t you see? It is your own gate of ice spears closing you off from the warmth of other souls

Who really could not care less about your lofty ambitions until you

Thrust them on us with the click of your cold heavy feet pounding the

Poor modest floors of our humble school

With the screeching cries of your importance,

Your desperation for our unwarranted attention.

 

“No, you do not flip your locks or

Adjust your skirt to display the bounty of your genotype but

You are promiscuous with your knowledge,

A harlot of your achievements.

 

“I wouldn’t mind to see the girl who sobs over romances and dances with graceless

Thunder but until you want

Her to

Be,

She will never be seen.”