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.