Nikia's Page

30th Birthday Poem
By Nikia Billingslea
I don’t miss government cheese
Sweaty, cracked symbol of teenage years
That saw no future, but I groped, clawed
Through the darkness, the way I reached
Up from under water 13 feet and grabbed
The nuts of my swimming instructor
To touch the light-hearted laughter of unseen
Lands viewed through television screens.
Different worlds that coerced me away
From homicidal daydreams of doing drive-bys
On my parents or diving into a self-induced permanent sleep.
I am a long way away
From eating syrup and bread to quiet the loud
Grumblings of my stomach
While frozen chickens whizzed past my head
Out the window.
I am a lifetime away from a bloody whipping
Because my little girl heart wanted to say hi
To a stranger.
My heart soften from all the not-happy
When I remember how a pretty boy asked my mom
If he could walk me to school my first day
Making me feel special, chosen to walk
In his beautiful world
The taste of brown speckled kumquats
Sweet taste of life
Too much to hold in my mouth
Laughter dripping down my chin
Friends who witnessed the sadness in my life
Reached in with acceptance and showed me
The way out, never enabling me to wallow in it.
Fits of giggles erupted without warning
Uncontrollably delighting me
A reprieve from the pain
Thirty years ago, I was born in a storm
Of teenage passion, revolution, Dionysian orgy,
End of agrarian simplicity and ended up raising parents
Who did not raise me.
At thirty I am a confused little girl
Wandering with my pad and pen through a meandering
Landscape of abstract lines and angles that lead past
Good, evil, perverted, wholesome, right, wrong, black, white
Into a blank canvas that is beckoning me to create a new vision