Deployment 4

You kept me up last night.

It wasn’t the homework

Or how much I missed you,

Or how much

I wished

You could hold our baby.

It was what you said.

About court.

The judge.

The unfairness of it all.

How courts only believed in the best lie.

The whiter person.

The Mom

Vs

the dad.

I know it’s how you vent

Talking

Like you’ve already lost

And that there’s no hope.

I know

it’s how you process the pain.

Their truth you spew

Is really

A drink you swallow.

Quenching

Like cold beer in the desert.

For me,

you’re saying you’ve already lost.

You say to me

To the rest of the world

Not to look for the answers.

A way out.

And for all the promises, the insistences that

It’s just talk,

I can’t help but believe

It’s seeped into your soul.

That a part of you is dying

The more truth you drink.

And if it has

the chinks in their armor go unnoticed.

Chinks we would have noticed. Together.

If we hadn’t given up hope.

I see you as The slayer of lies

And yes

Their truth is bitter.

And

Despite the taste

It settles your nerves.

But maybe

Here

When it comes to our souls

Their truth

isn’t the answer.

Maybe

For us to keep fighting

what we need to believe

Is

a lie:

that the judge does care for our words.

That they will believe us

Over

A white mother.

That everything isn’t hopeless.

That we still have a chance.

Maybe here,

A lie can save us.

And their truth

can go

Down the drain.