Friday, July 2, 2021

sIX FINGERs a love story

Poetry from Sheryl Bize-Boutte

Published on 07/01/2021 by Synchronized Chaos International Magazine

  

 

 sIX FINGERs 

 a love story

   

 He was born with six fingers 

 on each hand

 scalpel applied in a secret room

 Precision clean cut no trace

 Only a few knew 

  Cautioned not to reproduce

 He was fine with that

 A captain of industry

 A hellion

 A brute

 An unrepentant supply of evil

 A success

 Five remaining fingers

 On each hand

  Vice grips on all there was to have

 They named him man of the year

 In his private garden

 Of forever green grass

 And the blue eye sky

 He prospered

  

  

 She was born with six fingers 

 on each hand

 They tied them off with dirty string 

 let them fall back into origin

 Scars of protruding keloid

 Are even darker than her total gold

 Everyone knew

 Everyone whispered

 She was a hellion

 A brute

 An unrepentant supply of evil

 A bad mother

 A failed woman

 They named her witch

 Assigned designations without power to change

 Five remaining fingers on each hand

 barley clinging 

 to that thirsty branch

 Of the diseased tree

 She struggled

  

  

 They came upon each other one day.  It was a chance meeting, another arrangement of the universe.  After all, their worlds were separated, divergent, inequivalent yet equally actual.

  

 She was weary yet determined, walking slowly, the sidewalk seeming to grab at her steps as if to stop her progress.  This was nothing new.  Everything in life seemed to do that to her.  Yet she continued.

  

 He was on the same sidewalk, head in the air, walking briskly.  Too briskly to notice the woman he was heading toward. 

  

 And then they collided.  He was beyond angry that she had interfered with his forward progress. No one had ever done that before. No one. He instinctively pushed her to the ground.  That was his nature.

  

 She knew she had to protect herself.  She knew immediately she was on her own. If she had to fight, that was what she would do.  He would not be the first she had to battle. He would not be the last she would best.

  

 She lay there looking up at him, one of her hands shielding her eyes from his blue glare.

  

 And that is when he saw the scar on her hand.

  

 He immediately knew what it was and what it meant.

  

 He reached down to help her up.

  

 She wondered why and did not trust.

  

 Jarring clarity took him to his knees.

  

 He took her hand and ran his fingers across the scar.

  

 She embraced the bond of blue sky and golden sun.

  

 They knew their real names.

  

 Holding hands and rising together to their feet,

  

 Now beyond circumstance

  

 Strength and Hope walked on.

  

 copyright ©2021 by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte