TAKING THE LONG WALK HOME

So tired of being cooped up in this house, this cab, this school,

I broke a very sacred and basic rule.

“You can’t walk home,” they tell me each day.

But I am a child who loves to smile at people along the way.

They don’t understand my young free spirit so strictly confined.

This is why I took the path which others definitely declined.

Travelling each day to school, while they watch over me, I long to wander and be truly free.

Too young and dumb to realize the truth in the South,

I just traversed home and shut my little mouth.

The phone rang at 3:30 sharp and I answered with a grin,

They wanted to know where the hell I had been.

I tried to explain why I went home alone,

But they censored me and told me to walk downtown now, I MOAN!

So down to their office I walk slower and slower

And, when I arrive, they make me wait some more.

“Why did you leave school alone?”  They have to report!

I didn’t know they all thought my life had been cut short.

So I say, “The dumb kids are in school and cannot hurt me.”

Their eyes widen as they exclaimed, “What about their dumb family?”

So I walked the long, lethal walk home again,

And I never left ventured out alone again, ahem.

 (This is dedicated to the marshals, who protected me for the two years I attended Clarksdale High School in Mississippi.

BY

ELNORA PALMTAG)