After The Bluest Eye

The book weighs heavily on my left.
The last page stares at me –
Incriminating.
My thumbnails hold on tight;
Head tilted still;
Eyes seeing all but finding none –
Still in haste, refusing to accept that
She has placed her period solidly,
Defiantly, to complete her work:
The first to her Nobel end.
An old story that freshly wounds –
Immersed in Injustice.
As I sit on the grating fabric of
Swedish furniture of Chinese-make
That leaves money for American words
To redefine my mental state, seemingly –
Worldly I feel not –
Her words have made me spiral inward.
Echoes of a past that is my own
I find she bared in black and white:
Stark, clear, concise prose.
Ticking time carries on unbridled.
Unmerciful to my to-ing and fro-ing.
Constant bright light shines overhead
With its intensely focused warmth
To reveal the underlying condition.
Beautiful eyes to blind us
Perfect teeth to chop us
Lovely hair to ensnare us
Physical beauty to trap us
A soulful lament for self-loathing.
Self-evident, no less.
The final words that remain, blur
Too late, she wrote. Much too late.
What is this – a literal antidote;
Of just the bitter kind?
Head bowed, shrunken shoulders,
There is no refuting.
As thoughts coalesce, my grip lightens
Rivulets of acknowledgement run free,
I confess –
A younger me, much younger, I found
In the 163 past pages, plus this one.
I close The Bluest Eye
To open my brown ones.
I wonder if I’ll look the same to me now.

Quilt by Susan Brubaker Knapp (http://wwwbluemoonriver.blogspot.ch)

Wish Toni Morrison would read this: Audience of One.