Donetha: Well, you know sometimes all that you can do to escape the hurt and pain of family is scream, anything else would be way too much, very overwhelming, and consuming. To me, there is something very unique about a scream. In most cases, it’s not a good thing but in my case, it was a reminder that in spite of my dreams being silenced, I can still be heard because I still have a voice. DM: Damn, girl you are way too deep. Donetha: I wouldn’t say deep, I would say experienced though. They say that the hurt and pain will soon fade away and become a distant memory but if the truth be told, it will fade away but the memory is never distant because there is always a trigger that will remind you of what you’ve gone through and that memory will be just as fresh as the day that it happened. However, it is up to us to use it as a learning mechanism and a stepping stone instead of a locking mechanism and/or a headstone. DM: H old on, let me write that one down. Okay, let’s talk about one more poem then we will move on to something else. Donetha: Alright, it’s your call. DM: “One More Round Please”, tell me a little bit about that poem. Donetha: Girl you dug deep didn’t you. That poem is another one that was written about ten years before it was actually published. That particular poem was written when I found out the truth about me and my family. It was so hard to breathe back then, hard to accept that reality as truth, you feel me. That’s when suicide tried to make another run at me and yeah, I foolishly toyed with the idea again because at that point I was tired of running into brick walls. I was sick
of trying to earn the love of a mother that for reasons then unknown to me couldn’t love me back. DM: So where did the words come from? Like, what are you asking for in that poem? Donetha: I was asking for another round of breath. As long as there is breath, there is life, regardless of the situation or circumstance, you feel me. You see, one of the hardest things to do in life when we are faced with what seems like nothing more than constant hurt and pain is to convince ourselves that we are worth loving and being loved. At the end of the day, we have to remember that nothing matters more than how and what we feel for our own selves. So we have to be able to find that inner peace and love and channel it in such a way that it can protect us, sometimes even from ourselves. But there is another thing too. We have to remember that throughout life we all will have decisions to make, and one of those decisions will be to live or to die. Now we know that death is a given, it will happen, so all we need to do now is realize and understand that life is a possibility, and in that possibility great things can and will happen if we would just give it a chance to do so. So instead of calling it quits, as I was so easily ready to do, we should just ask for one more round of breath please. DM: Very well put. I had to ask about those three poems in particular because I’ve read your poetry book and although all of the poems spoke to me, I had questions about where these three had come from. Donetha: thing. Oh gosh, you actually read that
DM: Yeah, why you say it like that?
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