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For you, there is no sanctuary.
I knew it from the moment I saw you;
Scarred soul, Tired heart,
Eyes the color of the darkest storm.
In reality, you are calamity,
Untouchable, volatile force of nature,
But in my dreams, you are the very flower
That grows from the cracks of concrete.

For you, there is no sanctuary,
But in the house that I have built
High atop the mountains, high above the sea,
You will always have a place.
In the cage of my soul,
I have pried open the bars
And lit a torch
Just for you.

For you, there is no sanctuary,
But I conjure worlds, and for you
I will spin a tale of quietude, of calm seas,
Of warm dreams.
Close your eyes, sleep, and watch me
As I weave your scars into constellations,
Paint your heart with the colors of the sky,
Let your chaos guide my hands.

For you, I have made a sanctuary,
And as long as I breathe
The doors will be open.
Mossy, crooked, weathered, rusted;
In that house, a light will always shine,
Even in the darkest of nights

White man, give me apiece of your mind. A rotten mind, a backward mind, a mind that lures the black, that back bites the black, that oppress the black. A race, that runs late, on a snack, that wakes up late, that turns black late. I don’t want that mind, that rests on black hands, the hands that pick white to sew onto clothes and pillows that the master lains in the bedroom.

The police teargas the always crying eyes, the eyes that once glommed in the home Africa now no longer glowing in the promised white land . Look at me straight into my eyes while you shoot and blow up my black brains. Oh no it’s not black, it’s not white, it’s just like yours it’s just like the rest of us. Why judge me, while I protest for my rights, for what’s rightfully mine Oh ours.

I’m in the streets for Floyd, Floyd spoke, but it landed on deaf white ears, white threatened ears, all lies, we all know that, our eyes saw, of course your saw, the black, the bad, the useless, the hopeless, the get away with, like your master ancestors did. Shame on you, leave me alone, leave Floyd’s neck alone, leave us alone, we’ve been oppressed enough, Floyd said it, till he could no longer more. We can’t breathe, teargas, pepper spray, water cannons, unlike Floyd we blackly say till the white hears.

Why till today, why white man, you can’t breathe right, clear up your nose you will be fine. But not on my neck, take a break white man, you rogue law enforcer. Wait till we catch up with you in the streets, wailing, for our solely forgotten rights. This is our home too, our forefathers told us so. The dreadlocks, ours, the corn rows, ours. Keep it, the death row, that’s yours. The ones before us fought so long, for us, both black and white, why white man why, why not make it white between us.

Fight black man , like our ancestors did black man, for our always forgotten rights black man, like our forefathers for our future generation black man. Oh white man, spare us some free time white man unlike our forefathers white man. Black lives matter, that’s our main goal white man, things should change white man, unlike your white forefathers white man. As we sing, in solidarity, for our lost, for our gone, all for to come.

In 1944
A few months shy of the end of WW2
Mary Roberts, 12,
crossed a train track
several fields
and two stiles
To reach her father

It was mid harvest
Hot
Dust in the air
Earth like concrete
And he was grateful for the sandwich and the cold drink
That Mary brought with her.

It was a Wednesday
An ordinary day
If any day can be ordinary
But tragedy was unfolding
In its deepest
Most painful permutations

The sun beating on her bare shoulders
Mary made her way home
Back across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was almost at the train track
When her father realized that he had forgotten something
So he ran across the fields
Over the two stiles
And was just in time to see Mary begin to cross the track

The train that day was ahead of schedule,
But Mary was oblivious to time and trains
Thinking instead of her baby sister,
My Mother
Whose pudgy hand
She liked to hold
So when she heard the urgent horn
Of the oncoming train
The screech of the brakes as it tried
In vain

To stop
She looked up
frozen in fear
And could not move

Her father
running as fast as he could
Tried to reach her in time to
PUSH HER SIDEWAYS
Anything to stop what was about to happen
But he was not fast enough
And so instead
He witnessed
The unwatchable.

Four years later
The grief killed him too

My Mother grew up
Without a sister or a father
And this grief began to shape her
the empty rooms
the things unsaid
the tragedy
Of that ordinary day
That lingered
Like the stain of dark blood
Soaking into memory
Creeping into the future
Across generations
Until finally
This grief reaches me too

By Emma Gibson

You shake my hand
Then she does,
Her warm hands are unfamiliar
Yours are cold and too much so,
I knew them because you made sure I did.
Through the cotton of my shirt to the thickness of my dancing pants,
My feet drew art on the carpet that you wiped clean with one strike,
One too tender touch you were not asked for.

I don’t know you like family.
Even as you encroach and penetrate,
Ducking your head under my grandmother’s door
Taking sips out of my sweet aunty’s cup,
Your smiles and pleasantries slap me with how casual they seem and
All but the guilty look in your eye
Wrings the truth of your torment out of my reality,
I cling to the memory of my fat ring turned
So that the bulk is in my shaking palm as I itched to hurt you for what you did,
A palm with no fingers, no function, no precision,
Nothing to hold and make my twitches action,
No-one to hit you as hard as you deserved.

Does she know who you are?
Does she know what you are?
She smiles at me, unaware that her homemaker
Destroyed my safety in mine.
I wish I could have sent a message
Through the brown etching in my palms
Past the encryption on my fingerprints
Through the chipped nail polish to the depths of what makes us women,
That she should grab herself
And run.

Pain isn’t gentle it carves with a blade,
rips through the quiet like thunder delayed.
It stains the floor where the dream once stood,
turns gold into rust, turns joy into wood.

But from splinters, the sculpture begins to rise,
born not of peace, but of sleepless skies.
The canvas cracks, but it still takes form,
a masterpiece molded from every storm.

Brushes dipped in nights that bled,
lines that shake with words unsaid.
Each verse, a bruise dressed up in rhyme,
each chorus, a wound still counting time.

What broke became a beat, a stroke,
an echo pulled from when silence spoke.
No hand creates without the quake,
no art is born without the break.

Clay remembers every press,
marble holds the heaviness.
Colors scream before they shine.
pain is the ink inside the line.

Not every fire is meant to burn,
some were lit so light could learn.
Creation crawls from aching dust,
not from love, but from broken trust.

See how the sorrow shapes the sound,
how beauties built from battleground.
The melody moans, the palette weeps,
truth only grows where memory sleeps.

No name, no face, no single scar,
just thunder sculpted into art.
And when the weeping finally ceased,
the wreckage hummed a kind of peace.

So let the page remember pain,
let brushstrokes mimic acid rain.
From chaos came this final part,
what hurt the most still made the art.

In owned reverie, how the spirit moves …
How it bodes, to what it knows,
How she thinks on her feet without even moving –
through the sweetgrass over my door to enable me somehow.

Bones beneath the flesh, framing this body, caging my soul,
Between open windows.

How the heart-shaped leaf groove bites my coffee table,
Decorative, at each quaff, like a map of life.

Cedar forests barricade me against bad juju, voodoo hags, the enticing tongues,
Secures me a spot, one tiny dot, nowhere inside the teak-tree grove,
Counters the approaching death,
How it hews my enmities, and slow ravaging distractions.

Dissipated smokes in my Yrgacheffe distil my thoughts
Crouch me low, I hear a prayer moan slow.
Rain on skin, beats the chivalry I fought

I duck myself, mawkish, and rest my feet.
In the corner, at an end to sauntering, indeed.
Deboned of flesh, stepped outside the shadow
An after-hours damp waft off the mercado

How it brings to my soul a clarity long sought.

Women are turning into monsters
And it’s fashionable

We love long red claws
The sultry color of blood
The color has become sensual
We call it prettier things, of course
“Cranberry, sunburnt”

We darken our eyes
Smudge them on purpose
To mimic the stains of ferocious tears
We mimic pain
But we call it prettier things, of course
“Eyeliner, eyeshadow”

We dress up for attention
We aspire to invoke strong feeling
All dark colors and moody accessorizing
We call these prettier things, of course
“Feminine gaze, femme fatal, black swan beauty”

Call us extreme, call us monsters
We’ll become it
We’ll scare you in being it
But we’ll call it prettier things, of course
“Feminism, Fashion, Confidence”

ANGEL the ANGLERFISH swims toward the ocean surface.)

ANGEL the ANGLERFISH:

They say I’ve got a face only a mother could love, but if that’s true, where is she?
Mom? Is that you?
Ha! Just kidding.
It’s just another rock approached from an awkward angle.
Might be surprised how often I do that—come at things all wrong.
A bit ironic, don’t you think?
An anglerfish who never quite understands the angle.
Always expecting the best from others, only to be met with disappointment time and time
again.
Always lured in by something bright.
A smile. A laugh.
Only to be rejected because of my own grin.

Ocean’s a scary place. But it’s easier to survive if you have teeth.
It’s crazy how many times I’ve been used by others to deflect the unwanted attention of
an overeager suitor. A deranged ex. A predator.
Used like some kind of guard dog. A friend with no benefits.
Ocean’s a scary place. A lonely place.
Especially if you have teeth.

Mom…
Do my fangs jut just like hers?
How would I know? We’ve never met.
She laid her clutch of eggs and ran.
Ocean’s a scary place. Why try to navigate it while being weighed down by family?
My siblings and I hatched in darkness.
Were swallowed up by it, or by things lurking in it that are far worse.
For all I know, I’m the only one still swimming.
Does that make me the strongest? Or the luckiest?
Because I certainly don’t feel lucky.
To live in shadows. To be a shadow to happier fish.

Tell me, when do I get to be somebody’s light?
Not just a silly, deceptive trick.
But truly.
When can I be what helps someone to see the world at its best?
With a face like this, would the world ever care to show me its best?
Do I belong in the dark, with the unseemly and grotesque?

Ocean’s a scary place. Things even eerier than I am call it home.
Take, for example, who—what—I encountered today.
At first, all I heard was a chuckle. Sounded like it could be from a new friend.
I followed the laughter. Discovered its source.
A fissure in the seafloor, glowing red, pulsing warm. Ripped open by last night’s quake.
Tectonics have been busy lately.

Ocean’s a scary place. The giggling—it came from within the gleaming tear.
It came from a face more jarring than my own.
A massive, blanched face, attached to something larger than a whale.
Something impossible. Something trapped but almost free.
Not a friend. Absolutely not a friend.
Though, it pretended to be one.

“Hiya,” it said from between crimson lips. “How nice of ya to say hello!”
But I didn’t say hello. I didn’t say a word.
“Fun’s almost here,” the thing said. “Circus has come to town! There’ll be lotsa lights.
Lotsa cheer.”
And then it cackled. A horrible sound. Not friendly in the least.
Sure, I’ve heard of a clownfish, but this… This was a monster fish.
Rotten fish. Nightmare fish.
Not even a fish.
“Want a balloon?” it asked, reaching out to me with a claw.

I swam away as fast as I could, wanting nothing of what it offered.
But “balloon” gave me an idea.
Don’t know why I’d never thought of it before.
Up.
I could go up.
I should go up.
Up, up, up!
Ocean’s a scary place. But maybe less scary up there.

Should’ve tried this a long time ago.
But that’s the thing about darkness.
Once it gets its hooks in you, it never wants to let you leave.
It fills you so completely, you forget anything else exists.
But now I’m looking up.
I’m swimming up.
Moving on up.
Up, up, up!
Changing my perspective. Trying a different angle.

Trying to see Mom.
Untethered. Without anchors.
Duties fulfilled, wanting something other than a lifetime enveloped in gloom.
She’s light, heaviness discarded beneath her.
Lifting higher and higher.
Maybe she’s up this way, where I haven’t ever looked.
She’s out of the black. She’s a part of the blue.

And, now, so am I.
No longer a shadow.
Finally, shining. Rising.
Giggling.
Part of the blue.

But there’s also green. Yellow. Orange. Pink. Violet.
A vibrant palette. A circus to escape and explore.
Ocean’s a scary place.
But there’s beauty here, too.

End of monologue.

The words do not reach me in the last pew.
The preaching is as sonorous and unknowable
as the Latin intoned for centuries to illiterates.
I would guide my behavior on what is said
but can grasp only fragments of phrases.
Does the failing of my hearing or listening
leave me vulnerable to sinning in ignorance,
or could I be saved by spiritual resonance?
My pew has the trappings of Limbo.

This monologue is from my full-length play entitled Clarissa Buys The Flowers Herself, which is an adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. In it, Clarissa remembers and laments the 1918 Pandemic.

CLARISSA

How did he kill himself? Why did he do it? (writes in journal) Death is defiance? Death is an attempt to communicate? Is there an embrace in death?

SHE parts the curtain and notices an old woman in a nearby window. THEY stare at one another for many beats. THEY both put a hand up to the glass as if to connect.

What is this fervent insistence to move forward as if nothing ever happened? How can everyone forget about all the illness, death, and destruction? Where is the human regard for everything we lost? I never met you, young man, but we’re so much alike. Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages / Thou thy worldly task has done / Home art gone, and taken thy wages / No exociser harm thee! / Nor no witchcraft charm thee / Nothing ill come near thee / Quiet consummation have / And renowned be thy grave. (pause) Four exact rhymes and one slant rhyme. Is life just one epic contradiction? (pacing) What is it about tonight that makes me question everything? Who am I to be the wife to an upper-class man? Why did I chase social success? I compromised my passion and my soul when I married Richard. (wiping away tears)
That young man preserved his soul by choosing death. I must come to terms with my life. I must come to terms with who I am today … pale … thin … weak … tired … I’ll come to terms with all of this and endure. I am Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Maybe life isn’t something to be celebrated. Maybe it’s something to be endured.