Cynthia Robinson Young

I Had a Dream, Part II

My grandmother was an interpreter of dreams,

but my dreams only represented numbers

she would play that day. I was

her Numbers Runner.

I was her connection with the bookie.

I was her protection from The Law. I was

her money maker—small change,

but it was money just the same. I was

her supplier of dreams to play her numbers by,

and sometimes, even my nightmares,

all coded into numbers in a little paperback

with a “Chinaman” on the cover, eager to help.

I took my dreams with me to college,

along with the protection I provided. I was

ashamed that I felt relief that,

when they took put her in prison,

she didn’t take me with her.

My cousin, doing his duty to his family,

became who I was, and when the police came,

they took him and his ticket to ride away,

incarcerated it, along with his chance to be better,

to be freer than our Elders before us.

Prison coddled her and the inmates called her Grandma.

It taught her how to crochet

Afghan blankets for her grandchildren--

but what did prison do for him,

a Black boy becoming a man

who thought he was

simply obeying his elder,

just like we’ve always been taught to do?

CYNTHIA ROBINSON YOUNG is a native of Newark, New Jersey, but now lives in the South. Her work has appeared in various journals including The Ekphrastic Review, The Thorn, Sojourners, Poetry South, Sixfold, and Catapula: a magazine of Southern perspectives. For her chapbook, Migration (Finishing Line Press), she was named Finalist in the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award in the chapbook division.