::01:09:09::

::: She Just Don't See It :::

A fine sista.
Buttery brown skin, eyes full of life and light flitting to and fro down the sidewalk
Across the street and to the sky, blessing everywhere and everything without a trace of knowing
Here I was walking in my own life shining my own light (I suppose)
Not tooting my own horn but my hand on it just the same just in case and I noticed her at the second glance.
Immediately I felt the warmth of the light from her eyes
She was just giving it away!
Just like that. A smile or two from passersby, neither smile caught her eye
She kept on walking.
I was upon her and I stared, stared, stared, that warmth she projected like being near a fire
someone you care about set up for themselves but given the nature of the thing you can’t help but to feel the warmth. I stared and stared and was about to toot that horn, my horn,
when we
Met eyes.
All the hope that she was on the level poured through my pores and onto my shirt, a rather mundane piece of clothing, and filled my sneakers up, my worn and semi-clean sneakers
that were out of fashion since last year.
The cut of my jeans were of no worthy note either, I can tell you.
I took my hand off that horn, my horn as that hope took hold and possessed me, and
whatever light I had in me I made sure to shine it to her.
Did I shine? In my eyes I was. In hers I could see mine fading. That warmth was hit with an updraft and her smile fell about twenty degrees Fahrenheit.
They went up and down.
First down, to where the pride of my manhood was housed, in those jeans of no worthy
note.
To those outdated sneakers. Her smile fell another twenty. That warmth about-faced.
Then back up, to that shirt, a mundane affair
As mundane as the cut of my hair,
Long enough to add variety, short enough to manage.
That smile was on the verge of freezing, that warmth jumped back away from me
What did I do wrong?
My heart’s in the right place
For the right type of woman (on my sleeve)
All she had to do was take it and I would’ve forked it over like a twenty after Lady Luck left you looking stupid in the middle of the street for making the wrong bet.
Well this lady in front of me, fine sista with the buttery brown skin and once-warm eyes
now had the look of someone whose time was in danger of being wasted.
I was still in the clutches of that hope and in my single-mindedness tried to match that now-gone warmth with more of my own.
But when that iciness hit my heart I dropped that horn, my horn, plucked my heart from my sleeve and tucked back into its cage.
She didn’t want it. She saw the cut of my jeans, the plainness of my shirt and hair and
Poof!
That smile she gave freely was now priced and that coldness suggested I could not hope to afford it.
That’s what I was going on and fine sista nipped that bud early.
Way early.
Why?
My clothes didn’t hide the light in me
they made it easier to see
that was its purpose
but we
Sometimes make the mistake of calling glitter the gold and it’s not that way all the time.
Rarely so.
Oh, fine sista, you’ve been trained to rely on that which is here today and gone tomorrow in the arms of another. I could love for as long as there was a day and night which if my calculations are correct would be always
But you say I ain’t for you or we so…
What could I do? I stooped low and picked that horn right up, put my hand on it and walked and was sorry
that such a priceless thing was priced but remembered for that
brief while,
a brief while
that smile.
That smile, that smile,
was free for me.

Written by: ~ Ode