McKinney, Texas

[crow]

McKinney, Texas

My heart sings and is a stranger to me
because it doesn't understand
that someone was forsaken,
how she 
was taken by the back of the head,
when a coward put his hand
into her hair
in the old, wrong way,
for its strangeness,
and that then,
for its strangeness,
he
crushed her face into the dim, dry grass,
and my heart sings 
because it doesn't understand
what it means.

My heart sings because it doesn't understand
that there's still more story left,
that more bad news is left, and
my heart doesn't know
that it won't get easier, now
that the grass has been mown,
and that it's going, yes,
to get harder, now,
and my heart doesn't understand
that,
that we have yet to hear how,
precisely, a confused man
in his confusion decided
to force a girl,
in her confusion and next to naked,
beneath his weight,
and who he is,
and why he did that, why he pressed
her down, down
where she will stay forever, now,
captioned,
"Powerless."

My heart sings because, I guess,
it doesn't know the word, "powerless."

My heart sings, and as it sings, 
what it sings is strange,
it sings, "Someday,"
a word, I must confess,
that I don't know anymore,
what it means, 
because lately, she 
is everyday.
And I am powerless.
Every day. We
are powerless,
every day,
and every day 
she 
is condemned 
to have struggle to unlearn
what it means to be crushed

and everyday she
is beaten
and every day she
becomes forever,
again,
in the old, wrong way,
and I'm afraid 
that when my heart sings, "Someday,"
that instead it should just silently be
silent, in the old, wrong way. 

But my heart doesn't listen, and instead it sings,
for her,
and for her, now, my heart refuses not to sing.