Six Volt

7, 6, 5, 4,

She was walk­ing now, step­ping 3 steps to the mic, 2 breaths, a sheet of now crum­pled paper – 1, and no thoughts, zero. Her bangs fell for­ward, both­er­ing her lashes. She wanted a hair­cut. She refrained from toss­ing her head. Not going to be that grrl, the hair flip­per. Her hands dropped to her sides and the paper floated to the floor. Her chin found itself and she spoke.

She spit the lines she had writ­ten, a psy­chotic snare cadence with high hat vol­leys, unin­tel­li­gi­ble, all rhythm and anger and tune­less rock and roll, orig­i­nal punk. It came from her like gangs roil­ing before a rum­ble, the words sound­ing the way graf­fiti text looks – unread­able, beautiful.

Her feet spread to hip width and she raised her palms hip high, fin­gers down. Her fore­arms flexed and she fin­ished her poem. She felt like she had fin­ished a puz­zle, com­plete and still held one piece in her hand. Silence, a breath.

I heard the rain on the roof now, black penny nails on tin. It must have just started, the rain. She took a step side­ways and down to her seat, head bowed, but not meek.

In me, the cyn­i­cism that had been ris­ing for a week from

lis­ten­ing to the news

doing the job

quelling the rage

pay­ing the bill

being the ”man”

avoid­ing the truth

vot­ing

from con­sum­ing

from being eaten alive from the inside and out

all that cyn­i­cism that is more poi­so­nous than any con­ser­vatism, lib­er­al­ism, demor­e­pub­li­can­ism, more lethal than a bad diag­no­sis – all that fell away when I saw the slight­est cor­ner of her mouth turn to a smile as her bowed head led her back to her chair.