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.