Date released:

July 4, 2021

Category:

Poem

Photo credit:

Dapo Abideen

93

Author

This window seat is perfect, though dusty it may be,

To look outside at wandering souls and think of history.

The days I cared for only love and fun, camaraderie

And had a plethora of hopes and dreams, an aching, a need to be.

Those days are gone from me, and now, I look at them through lens

Of sepia-tone and the rosiest rose, so long reality bends.

It twirls and jerks until I feel as though it's '93

That dreamy year, when poetry caressed me, made me free.

I drank a lot of ginger beer, Campari, gin and juice

Attended many jamborees, made memories, danced the blues.

“A vision in a maxi-skirt" is how they spoke of me,

And my slender neck, my jet-black hair, waist tiny as could be.

My escapades now sing a dirge inside of my head,

To happier times, freer times, an unbroken tonic thread.

It soothes me on the good nights, makes me sleepy on the best,

And on the nights of anguish, it stops at my request.

A wonder though, how clear they are, these little sips of past,

A past they say cannot be mine, and then they leave me – fast.

Each time I try to tell them when they call, the things I know,

They tell me to be quiet, I'm a child, what do I know?

I'm told my mother had me in the summer of '03.

How, then, do I feel a longing for the things of '93?

They do not understand me when I speak, and how could they?

Seventeen, but more like fifty; that's why I'm locked away.

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