Lesley Younge
The rage shows up as four glasses of wine a night,
a brief and disastrous affair, fifty unshakeable pounds,
or a fender bender while texting furiously, injury heaped
upon the insult of living life within a cage of our own making.
Big girls don’t cry (except on the toilet) and they don’t say
‘fuck this’ while packing a duffle bag for a one way trip —
they make dinner, unwrapping roast or stirring stringy zucchini into sauce,
red vision blurred by rose colored glasses passed down from our mothers,
the hot boils up and over so we mop and we mop and we mop
and we mop, bleach and salt water slicking the floor,
but it just smells like someone trying to stifle the stench
of something dead and buried under the boards.
Lesley Younge is an educator and writer living in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is the author of two books for young people: Nearer My Freedom, an award-winning verse novel remix of Olaudah Equiano’s seminal autobiography, and A-Train Allen, her first picture book. Lesley’s work has been supported by the Hurston/Wright Foundation, Anaphora Literary Arts, Spoken Black Girl Magazine, West Trade Review, Midnight & Indigo, The Plentitudes, and Full Bleed. She blogs at teacherlesley.com