Somebody Else's Daughter
Somebody else's daughter
A cuckoo without the first nest
Too one for the other, too
American to be alien, too
(Never) Alien to be American,
In a world of extremes, I
’Ndecisive, switch from one foot
To another,
Only for me to take someone else’s place,
Aspiring
To receive this cloak of shorn feathers
Eager to play at a peacock and to hover as a hummingbird
Made for this, yet, conscious, always aware, of not-belonging,
Perhaps, even, not-right, a faerie child in the harsh daylight
Turned demon’s imp in the setting sun, seeking to
Rend and destroy as my own bleeds, but
’Ever more than what I
Say, for what lurks below the
Surface is easily dismissed, guised in careful words.