Another Kind of Normal
Location
When you’re a child
Everything in your world is innocent.
The flowers,
The other kids in your class,
The trees,
Your favorite toy,
Your parents.
When you’re a child
You develop your own kind of
Normal.
You assume everyone’s father
Drinks alcohol every morning
With you while you
Enjoy your juice box and lucky charms.
You believe it is socially acceptable
For your mother to be shoved through
Glass doors and
To tell family members her
Bruises and leopard-like
Patterns that flooded her
Fragile body were “nothing.”
Everybody’s mommy
Had that.
When you’re a child
It is normal for
You to wonder why other
Children look different than you do.
As you get closer to your
Double digit ages
You question why your
Skin looks different than the rest.
Why others tell you
You can’t play on the
Monkey bars with them because
Your skin is darker than theirs;
So you wait until they’re gone
To enjoy the playground
And especially the monkey bars
So you can hang on and
Swing from bar to bar
Developing calluses on young palms
And pray for the courage to hold on,
By yourself.
When you’re a child
You start to develop your
Own schedule that’s
Completely normal to you.
You wake up,
Pass your daddy
Grabbing mommy by the hair
In the kitchen
And swallow your tears
While standing in the doorway
With your Powerpuff Girls lunch box
And little red bows in your hair
To wait for mommy to
Take you to school.
You get shoved in the
Sea of wood chips at the playground
For looking different
And sit in the dirt
With wood chips in your
Curly hair and one
Of your red bows torn,
Demolished in the brown sea.
You come home
Excited to see daddy,
Hoping he will only throw
Three empty
King Cobra bottles at you today,
Not four like usual;
You just learned
Numbers last week.
You stare at mommy as
She’s tucking you in bed
Asking why one of her eyes
Is closed;
She tells you a
Bedtime story to explain
How she slayed a dragon
To save a princess
Locked away in a tower
And mommy got a booboo
In the process.
Then,
You wake up.
When you’re a child
It is normal for
You to enjoy having your friends
With you at your tea party,
But you wonder why no one else can
See them,
Only You.
You go every day thinking
The nice guys in black uniforms
And cool stickers
Were going to come over
And join your tea party;
Thats what they did last time…
And the time before…
And the time before that…
And the time before that…
You question why
The other kids in your class laughed
At you when everyone else’s
Daddy came to class
But yours couldn’t,
So you wrote a small
Story about how you visited
Daddy on sunday
But he was behind a glass window
Wearing an orange jumpsuit
For fathers day.
I thought everyone’s daddy lived behind
Glass windows and wore orange jumpsuits?
The process goes on
Until you grow up thinking
This is the social norm.
That everyone’s mother
Weeps on the floor
As she pleads
“It won’t happen again.”
That everyone’s father
Slurs their words at 8 am
While stumbling through the house
With a forty ounce
Clinging from his fingers
On his violent,
Bloodstained hands.
That it is normal to have
The authorities in your home
Three to four times
A week.
That it is okay for others
To shun you due to
Your skin color.
That it is okay to be shoved
In the dirt or
Tripped in the hallways
For looking different than the rest.
That it is normal
To go home hoping
You will be able to
Dodge the flying beer cans
And empty liquor bottles
Because you were able to
Do it once,
So try again.
That it is normal
To hope that one day
Your eye will be shut just like
Mommy’s so you
Can be just as courageous
And live to tell the story
Of how you saved the little
Princess from the dragon
To your children one day.
And as a child of this earth,
this is your own kind of normal.