I heard Lucille Clifton

First Year.

At my workplace

if you can call it that,

I am alone in a ruin

of dusty blue gray

houses where the war

has been

and is still flickering

nearby

No one looks at me.

The students stare at me

with numb

distain or hope

that I may not recognize anymore.

the teachers stare at me

from above their desks

and I feel young and

dangerous to the barcade

in which they made

to keep order

and empathy

close to the bullet ash floor.

it makes me doubt

if I still love this

or ever did.

But then

I heard Lucille Clifton

“ I think it’s affirming that

after a tragedy like this

I continue to write, that

I still have poetry left”