ThE L@t!n G!rL $pE@k$ 0F RIver$......!!

When I wrote about the serpentine river

I was really writing about a rape.

When I wrote about the moon over an oak tree 

I was writing about a preteen pregnancy.

When I wrote about the crystalline sea

I was writing all the horror around me into intricate filigree.

I was writing my heart out.

I was writing myself back in.

When I wrote about heart
I imagined a muscle of infinite distance,
of the brave little choo choo times ten.

I was dreaming of a heart-shaped boat,

an extension of my past, my trapped beginnings.

When I wrote of a river it was one
I could get myself into twice.

It was wide as an Anglo-dammed Nile,

long as the Negro Mississippi.

I wanted to wrench myself a new closure.

I wanted the tourniquet and the cannon.

I wanted the white water to sail me to a place

where the journey never ends—

instead of the endless fluid nights.

I wanted the fissures to heal of their own magma.

I wanted something of the banks to make clay,
to make me a setting at someone's bountiful table.

I wanted real silver on the plaits of that liquid path.

I wanted its icy skin to burn against mine,

to cleave with each lap,
and run, like the fallen log I was.

I wanted the box of my childhood to open.

I wrote longing in some minor key about a crystalline
river, about the telling moon, about a single leaf
 that could carry me home, about the knowing sea,
 about me.

~ Lorna Dee Cervantes

PS i love this piece of writing and this one's definitley worth sharing....so go ahead n share if you like poetry thats so admirable....!! :)