Heavy Crowns

Months go by, 

As you stand on your own, 

Under harsh yellow lights, 

Your tweed glimmers gold. 

Eyes now hollow and weary, 

Dreams now shallow and bare, 

You come as you leave, 

With nothing to spare. 

Unmoved;

Stirred, but unshaken, 

Though riots surround. 

As silence, you speak, 

And as noise, make no sound. 

You have no owner. 

No. 

You will take no lead. 

To the soul that dares to touch you, 

Good health, and Godspeed. 

Oh mysterious cacophony, 

Whose echo fills halls. 

Come stand enthralled and deranged by 

This otherness that belongs. 

You don your mother’s strength easily, 

Your father’s quiet lava abounds, 

You hold on from habit… or memory. 

Alas, you wear a heavy crown. 

© Adenike O. Akinbisehin ‘Heavy Crowns’.