Spoken Word Artist.

Published In GSU's Underground Literary Journal 

Fall 2014 Volume V, Issue I 

 

YESTERDAY I WEPT

 

 

 

Yesterday I wept.

I left the last of my composure 

at the dinner table

where we sat across from each other

over pork chops, Cajun rice, mash potatoes and gravy,  

American food cooked by Chinese people

who knew little English, but knew what customer service was,

giving this new buffet a try,

and hoping you would do the same for me.

I don't know if it was something in the noodles

or if it was something in my mind

that was nauseating,

like I was two seconds away from one mama's ass whippings,

after the teacher slipped and spilled the beans 

on how I was cutting up in class

as if jokes were more amusing than long division.

Not much different than I used to be, 

I covered up what was serious with comedy.

I laughed loudly after every punch line

setting up the mood to hear that you would take me back

right after you became full and smiled as wide as an ocean,

but you told me no.

 

You told me no.

 

Out-to-eat food never tasted so awful,

and I've never been more shipwrecked, 

crushed and coiled.

This precious awaited moment that I could almost taste

morphed into the longest painstaking minutes of my life, 

and I couldn't find my keys fast enough to escape it,

frisking myself like a bouncer at a club,

searching for something that he could confiscate 

for his own keepsake, 

but then I realized they were on the floor 

with my self-esteem.

 

I, a bundle of nerves and an unbalanced head

on the car ride home,

trying to stay in my lane,

not just on the road,

but not to overstep any boundaries in 

trying to get you back before 

I dropped you off,

but it seemed as though you had already left,

long before dinner.

 

With the car in park and the engine still running,

you hugged me like you would never see me again

and I released you like it wasn't the end.

And within a blink, you were gone, just like that.

Immediately I became a fallen soldier,

dulled senses and numb.

I muted the fm radio

and gripped the steering wheel 

like I should have gripped you 

before you decided to throw in the towel, 

and mark me as something in your past.

Driving through tears,

confusing no left turn signs with stops signs,

this path I normally know like the back of my hand

seemed so foreign when I have

a boat load of regrets rushing through my head.  

But at last, like a runaway slave 

with lashes embedded in his back 

who just set foot on northern land

I reached the place we both used to call home.

 

Yesterday I wept.

I found myself paralyzed in a dark room,

if she had called me later that day, 

I still wouldn't have been moved. 

I was torn apart in the center of the floor, 

fighting off flashbacks of what we used to be

and how it ended,

becoming paranoid by all my mistakes that I made

and the ones I haven't made yet.

 

Yesterday I wept.

I was searching for solutions that did not exist

and bothering to ask God nothing 

and that's when it hit me,

I was no longer this stone bridge

secure and built to never break down.

 

Yesterday I wept.

 

I saw a man I wasn't ready to see.