Before, I had a green frond from exalted fields,
I had a bright yellow star that trembled on the hilltop.
But before I was nothing but blind rhetoric.
I was a featherhead with a fancy hat, a splendid parrot.
Back before I had a single line on my forehead
or crickets crowding my brain. I was a diaphanous girl.
Happy. I was a nomadic laugh on the back of a camel,
and my conscience was dry flour. I went drumming
down the long corridors of well-worn theories.
What they said I said, and I said it louder.
I used to follow the procession of applause, spit
contagious slogans. In the line behind the coffin,
I wept if they wept. I was master of the grave,
commandeering the void with a svelte little smile,
and the dirt I threw in the ditch was a fistful of cake flour
that dusted the darkness with stars.