I did not run away
I walked away by daylight
—Sojourner Truth
The hour I ran out
on my bondage I
didn’t run.
The sun was
Shining in its
Sunday’s best,
beating its coat
on my coat. This
heat produced my
sweat, not swift
feet. My haircut,
new. & my hat
wore ribbons
fit a church
frontrow. A day so
ordinary who could
guess
what I walked
away from? How
could I be anyone
but me,
with my name in
my teeth? My feet
gliding under each
detective’s lowered
brim. The bounty
on my head
higher than hawk
circles.
The night I walked
out on my master
is when I learned
I was serving one.
The same molar
chiding my cheeks
a mole engorging
silence. My first
spy the dream in
my
brain entrenching
ownership. I spent
12,000 treks
thinking my
moves were my
own until I found
road stretching out
of a forest I hadn’t
even seen grow.
When I arrived
at the brush &
flatland I knew
where I had been
had not been mine,
but a life for my
first love. The first
who gave my
selfness a ceiling.
How could I have
not chosen my
maker before
choosing myself?
The night I walked
out on my master
wasn’t night
at all. Freedom
made the day
ordinary in a new
way. How for a
fish water is never
new, just a change
between bodies.
But if a child
exits
my chute gravity is
law, & down
becomes a
direction.
The first time my
feet touched floor I
learned the bottom.
After,
I took my legs &
forged a path
between a past &
Jupiter.
Now time can’t
touch me & I’m
where water is
always fresh
though it pains like
we do. Where pine
trees grow w/ no
hunting season is
where I am headed.
A compass w/ no
map is the stars.
Find your way. If I
told you the
address
It wouldn’t be a
secret.
Copyright © 2024 by Nabila Lovelace. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 14, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.