No one told us
or compelled us to read,
yet we would sit
savouring the solemnity
of poems
written with unwashed hands
sipping cups of green tea.
Often love tales rated 18,
sung with emotions high.
Of hate speech raw and untainted
and polite stories of homicide
beheld upon our laps.
No one told us
that we could handpick characters
in whom we delight
yet never become.
The ones who survived through blemish
Painted in stanzas and lyrics.
Free and deserving,
our bones began to hope
for the magic encrypted,
shrouded in pages by sages
called poets.
We saved precious lines
hoping they’d somehow
free us
or perhaps enslave us
in the small possibilities
that chariots could ride on sea
and whales float on dry land.
We didn’t have
the spirits the poets owned
yet we choose to believe
that life could be poems.
So we read each one over
to rid any disbelief.
