Missing

[Valerie Please]

Hello! I like the central idea of the poem. I am currently reconfiguring myself into dissertation mode, out of poetry mode, so I'm looking at this with dissertation mind and have some edits to suggest:

Missing 

Missing black haired girls with brown skin
I hope they survived white mans sins.
Red hand over mouth, led make white skin pale. (is this the "led" you mean? Like "led astray?")

Missing a woman from where I lived
understanding it must hard to be a mother
in a lost forest lost in absurdity. (Lost twice as a descriptor in the same line? My Teacher of Record wouldn't let me get away with it.) 

Missing a kid long grown up
his jersey doesn't match his suite. (You mean a suite like a hotel suite?)
Suits up for business meeting.

Missing complaints about the cost of milk,
instead of toilet paper within grocery store
surrounded by future mummies. (I like this stanza. I like the idea that we're always annoyed about something until we die. I like the way this sort of everyday complaint is situated in the poem. it also indicates a specific place and time, post-pandemic.)

Missing my keys every morning I don't work.
I wake up early to just feel normal.
Without routes a delivery driver bikes aimlessly. (Same for this stanza. Can you push the "I wake up early to just feel normal" to be more descriptive?)

Missing the baskball court in the wind (spelling, god it's rough)
dribbling, therapy it's all the same.
Shooting shots mediation springs new beginnings. (I like this too, can you push it to be more descriptive, the basketball bouncing and springing?)

Missing the stage, my gravity. A musician
without notes is an artist reborn. Bass drum is 
foot steps now, my melody under my breath. (I also like the patterns of ambient noise and this sensory connection.)

Missing love, a black girl in a white state
can't trust boys with a warriors pain. (warrior's ?)
Romance prescription wiping war away.

I miss her. I miss my best friend.
I'll smile she's flying home today. (I know I just griped at you in the last poem for changing your stanza pattern but it makes sense here.)

Missing a world thankful for the sun
soft against our skin. Hope for humanity;
hope from within.

Thanks for the reprieve of a poem. Now I'm back to highlighting all my own edits in my chapter. Ugh.

xo,
Val