The Book Nook Chronicles

Poem inspired by Safiya Sinclair’s How to Say Babylon

Men in my family grow mighty
while the women shrunk.

Between her hope and his fire,
my fear nudged out of its sell.

Impenetrable as a pearl
yet just a girl.

I was not the princess,
I was the dragon.

Happiness was a sun-shower of sins
a beautiful fable of itself.

I bobbed transfixed,
watching the women
miles and decades beyond me.