Photo by Rachel Livinal.
In this poem, VoiceWaves reporter Rachel Livinal writes about her transition from a small city to the much larger city of Long Beach, and how she’s learned to move through it all.
The monarchs in my neighborhood
Were the first sign I noticed
I apologize for this writer’s block
The city swaddled me
It’s been talking in my ear since
I turned
Onto my new street
Last Saturday
She likes to say
Move through me one step at a time,
Keep going,
The past is so far away,
A lifetime is six days
She says
You are a speck
You are a young woman
Among millions of others
Don’t forget your purpose
But remember
Here,
Less is always
Better than more
I would be lying
If I said I didn’t prepare
For this
Irrelevance
I imagined
The seas of cars,
The people,
The traffic,
The ocean air
However,
On Monday morning
Several people
Looked out of their cars,
Diverting their primal itinerary
To tell me
My blonde hair was so pretty
How naturally,
It bestowed this
Out of the box beauty
At this point
You’re thinking
What the hell are you getting at
What does this have to do
With the moral of the story
Insects have always
Gravitated to my hair
Bees,
Flies,
Pinchers,
Anything with wings
The monarchs in my neighborhood
They’ve been getting dangerously close
I’ve been waiting for one
To invest its time in my hair,
Get lost in my follicles,
Breathe in the scent of my shampoo,
Dance around my blonde wisps,
Trap itself and its wings,
And then angrily try to escape
I’ve been waiting
But not one came
What I’m trying to say is
I’ve spent a week
In a city that rests by the sea,
There’s so many people
A lot of the time
I feel like it’s going to break me
But the monarchs
They haven’t touched me,
They haven’t hurt me,
They haven’t betrayed my trust,
They’ve only recognized my face,
They’ve only highlighted my hair’s beauty,
They’ve only whispered to me,
That after this whole little
Lifetime
These next two years
Will take my innocence
And craft it
So that I become one
With the insects,
With the city
Not a target for them