Kadon is the first one to start sitting with me
Then Smoke and Rah started coming, too
I’m not a teacher, but they watch me mix colors
and turn shapes into people, spaces, and ideas
And I ask them
Y’all ever heard of the butterfly effect?
They keep cracking jokes
and talking shit
Clowning me about
my little paint set
And I remember myself
before the dream
before the colors and shapes
before the old paintings
by white artists
before the art history
when it was just me
in our apartment
on the floor
while the TV was on
Umi in the kitchen
making lamb and rice
Construction paper everywhere
Broken crayons everywhere
Coloring books everywhere
And me, small enough to fit
in the space between
the couch and coffee table
I colored outside the lines
I colored outside the boxes
like freedom
So I take a sheet
of white construction paper
and the watercolor set
and make me a box
make me some blurred lines
curved and smudged
smooth and rounded
and make me a butterfly
This week
the district attorney
the prosecutor
and my new attorney, Tarana
will meet with Jeremy Mathis
who will be giving a statement
and as I tell the Corners
about how a butterfly can change
a big thing out there in the world
butterflies are fluttering in my belly
Delicate wings flapping
so fast
I can’t even breathe right
I cover the page in butterflies
wondering if these butterflies
inside of me
will be the ones to
change the world
or maybe
Jeremy Mathis’s
truth is the real butterflies
Whatever his words will be
they will come fluttering out of him
small things
that will change
one big thing in the world
My life
My whole damn life—
I spread my paintings out across all the tables
and the Corners make sure that no one
messes with themFour small paintings
Watercolor on paper
Like Picasso’s Guernica—butterflies with distorted wings
at warat warat war
like Dalí’s Persistence of Memory—a watch
with pretty little wings trapped in its box
like da Vinci’s Mona Lisa—a black mother
sitting stillhands on her lapwith no mouth
I remix all these famous paintings
with the supplies that I have
and put them into a yellow envelope
from Ms. Buford’s office
I address it to Imani Dawson
and I write her a note
This is what I want the world
to know about me
My art—
My truth