Mangrove Girl

Up in the mangrove everything makes sense to her.

The chatty bulbul with the daily mangrove happenings:

“A baby snail got up a tree and got stuck

Its bright red bottom dangerously exposed

There was the noisy affair of the marriage

Of a cousin thrice removed

Of His Highness the Cicada King

And the crabs again in complete chaos

Their mud’s blocked up by another dam

They’re asking for you to look into that…”

But among her own kind everything is a mess,

A common tongue of undecipherable squawks

PreCalc

World Wars

Fahrenheit 451

Microscopy

Essays Homework

“Weirdo”

boyfriends? mean girls

Make-up malls short skirts

This little dove peeps hopefully through her wings

At offered hands

that look like claws

And retracts back whenever she can

To the canopies and cacophonies she knows so well

Through the portal to her mangrove spot

Where the bulbul gently takes her wings

Ebbs salty streams of human tears

Saying, “Hide from your kind

You can never do. We’re here for you

But you’re not one of us

This is your battle to fight

But we’ll always fly right behind you.”

Her world was not made to fit those of her mould

But the mangrove enfolds her in a snug embrace

For she is a mangrove girl

(A kind her kind cannot understand)

The mangrove

Where every creature has to flounder

Thigh-deep in murky bogwater,

Get down from every tree they climb on,

Hide from predators

Flex those pincers

And

get ready for another day’s

struggle.