Poetry Magazine, Mona Qafisheh, September 2000

Mona Qafisheh

USA

IMEgypt@aol.com
http://www.angelfire.com/music/MusicalMoments

Coloring Books

Am I that same little girl you knew
300 years ago?
You’re right.
Hair’s a little longer,
Eye’s reflect a little more of the night sky,
And I’m not afraid of anything.

I’ve learned alot in 3 long centuries.
I never question if what I believe is right,
I always have the right to ask the questions that you can’t ever answer.
I am all I have in this world.

I can’t count on you to protect me anymore.
Your wing has no room for me,
And my sober existence has no room for you.

You know,
I loved you at one time.
I really did,
And no one can ever take those cut grass and ice cream memories away from me.
Because they have taken your place.

My life with you ended decades ago because I outgrew your simplistic sparkle.
You never looked past the boundaries of your own backyard and you never strayed out of
your upper class suburban neighborhood,
But I never could color in the lines.
My crayon masterpieces always reflected my life to come,
Hectic
Confusing
Endless
And hard to follow.
It may not be easy,
But it’s all I got.

I really can’t complain.
I get to see the most brilliant sunrises
Through the window of some rented hotel.
I know that some day the punctures on my arms will heal.
In some other life I will never have to sleep in a dumpster,
Never have to feel the rats crawling through my hair
Never see another dead body
Never become the person I always avoided on the street.
On a good night,
Some big-shot senator will feed me dinner before he gets what he came for,
I guess no one likes to lay down with frost-bitten bones.
The black eye will heal and the split lip will seal itself up with blood.

You’re not as different from me as you would like to think.
We all want the same damn thing in the end,
Don’t we?
You can’t cut a deep enough line between your world and mine.
It can never be as deep as the long purple scar on my stomach,

That resembles a castle perched in the clouds.