She read to our class about rape and race,

More freckles than tears on her beautiful face.

She smiled and said reach out anytime,

A few months later, I did, when I felt my prime.

The kindness was gone, the smile dead.

Her rejection drilled through my heart and I bled.

I bought a pack of pills,

And drove to empty, paved hills.

 

I swallowed the words, the pills and pain,

Then the firefighters came.

Under fluorescent lights and tubes, I came through,

And to Joshua Tree, like a tumbleweed, I blew.

I never wrote her again, but her name pops up,

Her fame rises with each American cultural hiccup.

And I see those freckles in a different light,

She has already lost sight.