with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders
others
know sun
seeking like gypsies
over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows
bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me.
Love is a word, another kind of open.
As a diamond comes
into a knot of flame
I am Black
This is another line in which the speaker conveys two meanings. In conjunction with the previous lines, she seems to be insinuating that “love” is one of the words that bedevils her. Although she states that it is “another kind of open,” she is really saying that it is not. This is shown through the use of punctuation. In the previous stanzas, there has not been a period after the word “open;” yet there is a period here after the statement about love. Society claims that love is open, but the speaker – perhaps in relation to Audre Lorde’s own sexuality – feels that society’s idea of love is not truly open to her. 

Coal