A Girl Named Air

Hey everyone,

This is my last day as Poet of the Week on MSPGV! I have to say, its been an interesting exercise in pushing myself to write something every day. I'm really grateful for it.

Today I finished a poem I have been working on for over 6 months. This, my friends, is a huge deal. I've been trying to write this story, and I just couldn't finish it. I would stare at it for hours, asking myself how it ends. Because I don't know how it ends.

I don't know how any of this will end. I just get to live every day and do the next right thing, keep the hope, and enjoy the sunny days. Oh how I love acceptance Sundays. Everything just seems so much easier.

So here's the poem! I had a little problem with the blog not letting me space things properly, so I apologize for that. Technology sometimes gets a little unruly, just like I do!

A Girl Named Air

I once heard someone say that if the walls of Alcatraz could speak
they would shed ashen tears for all the evil which was carried inside them,
and I've never been there,
but I bet if these downtown alley dumspters could speak
they would tell you stories

Of being plentiful forests for midnight foragers,
3am urinals for the drunken wanderers,
and dented canvases for the renegade Van Gogh’s of this city.

And they might tell you about an 9 year old girl named Air,
weaving silently through backdoor mazes
Searching for pots of gold in her make believe forest
she whispers to them sometimes,
tells them about a father who taught her dodge unmarked vans

Never trust anyone in uniform

Or believe someone who says they will help

She’s learned to hide so well

even her daydreams can’t find her

She tells them that on these nights,

When he's praying on his cardboad cot,

too sleepy to take the stretchy band aid off his arm

She has to come hunting alone.

Cuz these nights her belly is so empty it feels like there are snakes

weaving figure eights in the shrunken core of her stomach.

And she's become friends with them,

the hunger has become her companion

Since the day her momma clutched her chest and turned blue

Like her favourite crayon

Cold, like the snow they used to play in after school

That day, the lights on the cars were so bright

And she watched through folding closet doors as men dressed in black

Zipped her mother into a plastic coffin

And now her daddy's been glued to the memories of his love

Been performing exorcisms into the concrete floor

Praying to the chalk outline

And Air’s never been afraid of ghosts

But now she thinks she is one

Because mamma lives inside her eyes

and daddy can’t look at her anymore

But tonight; she’s gonna find herself some sunglasses

Sing a lullaby or two under the blinking street lights

Pretend she still believes in Santa Claus, Disney movies

And birthday wishes come true

In the last phone booth on Second Avenue

She tells the operator

She wants to call heaven

As the snow falls around her

She knows she will leave her father soon

And not everyone gets a happy ending

But remembers that she was named after

What cannot be contained

There are places within her

As strong as the walls of Alcatraz

One day,

She will open the lock

And tell all of her stories

While the wind reminds the dumspters

Of a little girl named Air

And the streetlights dance

Knowing she found her way through the world.