Seasons

Dominique Jones

seasons
the thing about living in a place with seasons is
i get to see the trees go bare then bloom again
a reconstruction found in winter’s embrace
i relate
stripped bare in the dead of summer
petals hitting the ground with the weight of bullets
shot me down in a blaze of glory and horror
horrified, i fled in fall and slipped deeply into winter
bare, layered in scarves and silence
claiming to protect my voice, but secretly having no song left to sing
communed with snow like frenemies
hated it’s frigid nature but knew stasis was better than feeling the raw skin under cloth
dug my snow boots in; entrenched in winter
assuming the season would never change again for me even when i saw greenery peeking from my disposition
tried to slice the root but it was too deep to fatally cut
found tears melting the snow, watering the soil underneath
a moss growing thick as rivers fell
today i noticed pink pressing out of branch
a stark kind of happy i haven’t seen since last june
cautious, i let it in; made it take off its shoes
this is holy ground it was standing on
the thing about living in a place with seasons is
i get to see the trees go bare then bloom again
just like my heart
bite this dust
he pondered moving left
but she was unmoved
by lazy attempts
at relevance
in her sight, he had yet to find compass
so she’d stopped finding comfort
in his accent
now it just reminded her
how they were only similar on the surface
his lack of aptitude to match his attitude was irking
she lost no sleep thinking of him
in fact the thought of him
put her into deep slumber
he pondered moving left
but that would never make him mr. right
she stopped reading his texts
in the middle of the night
even when her phone lit up
her face didn’t
‘cause she was building the mountains
he only said he wanted to climb
and she could never love someone
who didn’t love himself enough
to learn the level of architecture
that his dreams required
new age old game
if master and slave
are terms we still use in tech
it’s deeper than lack of diversity
that’s just the effect
it’s programmed into the language
coded on our tongues
keep a hierarchy; never let them climb the rungs
young boys proliferate
old boys club rules
capture big data to compensate
for little jewels
silicon valley bears strange fruit
blood ‘tween their teeth and blood at the root
if master and slave
are terms we still use in tech
who’s still got the noose
that’s built for my neck
a corporation who won’t hire me
pushing me from where i was born
gentrification the norm, placation the form
where thousands of people apply and beg for
affordable housing: a key to the “poor door”
in skyscrapers built so we never see the sky
unless black bodies swing
from the code they apply
mother
a tower will always lead the way home
high, righteous, and silent
it asks for nothing but return
but this… it demands
it used to be a lighthouse
but it dimmed in the dawn of his death
spent years thrifting couches
trying to make the living room presentable
even though
there were never any guests
it used to be a flaming beacon
illuminated warmth
now you’d never know
how comforting it really is
unless you touched it
your touch would be rare
unromantic
never anything uncouth
but if you returned
no matter how long it had been
since you’d gone
you might see a flicker
in the dark center
of that tower’s eyes
Featured Artwork:
Guillaumin, Armand. Hollow in the snow. 1869. Musée d’Orsay. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org. Accessed December 2016.