Friday Night Fly

These days I feel like that actor in the movie The Fly.

At first it was just a hair or two poking out
in odd places.



Then he starts to notice
something has gone funny with his eyes.

His genes have fused with a common housefly.
He can not go back.
He is a changed man.

Like the scientist, I have fused with a black child,
a black woman, a black man, and been teleported here
in my new knowing, in my old body.

I used to wonder as a kid what I looked like to a fly.
A mosaic human form coming towards it's

compound eyes.

That’s what you have when you parent.

Magnified to nearly 360 degree vision
at all times
when you are also parenting a child of color.

as a must be as good as complex aka
see me as the uber mama single mother

On alert.

Afraid to miss anything.
A nuance.
A gesture.
A look.
or a looked over.

Ready to alight
on a misspoke word
and rewrite
the intention
of the old man at the store who calls
your child boy

knowing
there is nothing artificial
about the way that conjures up the ceramic
outstretched arms and white gloved
of the black faced stable hand
from the story you read in high school
and didn’t understand-

until your outspoken homosexual English teacher
explained to you
what being a bigot meant.

This is how I spend a few hours on a Friday night alone
unwinding from parent teacher conferences
staff meetings
pre school pot lucks and a
birthday party
all in the last three days-

I confide in you as I
try to unwrap my hairy
leg from
over my wing

and land.