Jozelle Dyer

For Writers in Baltimore Schools

I wish it hadn't happened. But I will write
a better poem, one that doesn't say I wish

it hadn’t happened. Of kinder-
garteners with anemone hands flowering

into the air to answer questions like what day
is today? not knowing how to count

by fives or how to describe the colors
of their skin, lit up in pinks and blues

and yellows or that when a full stop
has a little tail, it’s really a comma,

not an ending, their heavy brains
as wrinkle-free and fresh as lined paper,

smooth as crystal balls, phosphorescent—
without a past, all future—folding

into teenagers who, with pencils poised
in awkward hands, will begin to describe

their burden, the weight of shackles that never
encircled their wrists and the sound of the lash

they imagine scarring their backs. Imprinted
by malignity, they remember the dark

as they gather in dimly-lit cafes, sipping
at the close air and at the lips

of paper cups, feeling bodies pressed above,
below, and one on each side, they will write

until the sun breaks quietly over
the city, and they know it’s safe to walk away,

shouldering only, please God,
the weight of their own backpacks.

Jozelle Dyer was born in Trinidad, and raised in New York. She currently lives in Alexandria, Virginia.