Rough Edges

By Leadra Reeves

So kinky, so curly, so silky, so neat
The way she slicks back her dark brown strands;
concealing her roots underneath cakey coatings of clear gel;
Rougher than her edges,
that brown bristled brush lining her gifted palms is 
Tougher than her mother who keeps her pledges
Not of allegiance to a flag that belittles her but 
to her four kids she is raising all alone
in a neighborhood that instills a bloody cycle in young black lives, 
no one knows otherwise
Than how to make children orphans 
and have the streets teach them the do’s and don’t of a modernized society
She involuntarily inhales crack cocaine like it’s oxygen 
It’s everywhere, she is choking, 
Suffocating on this lifestyle
Still just a child she cannot part 
like the part down the middle she traces with her comb 
Her hot comb that is bigger than itself
Her hot comb that is a society uncooked, unseasoned, unflavored 
Her hot comb places an expectation on who she should be 
So she runs it through, burning any chance at self love, 
scorching any belief that she is a queen
Now eighteen, and still never even had a daddy around to hold up her crown 
So she searches for him in all the wrong men
which either ends in her death 
or leaves her lying at yet another ghettoed dead end.