Things are gonna get brighter.
—”Ooh Child,” The Five Stairsteps
In the photo, the girl is smiling.
I know all she is hiding.
If I could talk to her now,
I wouldn’t tell her much.
Wouldn’t warn her about
which boys will break her heart.
Wouldn’t tell her which jobs to avoid,
which years will last decades,
which friends will lie, which
day she should pay close attention.
But I would tell her that Nina Simone
was right when she covered The Five Stairsteps.
That things will be brighter.
The young me wouldn’t believe it, of course.
Because the healing hasn’t happened yet,
she has stopped believing it’s possible.
I might could slip that song into her
cassette mix. Even if she didn’t believe the lyrics,
she’d sing along. That’s the way she is.
And the words would land
in the branches of her heart
like the truest lyrics do. And build a nest there.
And when she lost her voice,
and when it got dark,
they would sing to her about the brightening.
Yeah, they would sing. They would sing.