Her Monologue of Dark Crepe with Edges of Light:

Mistress Adrienne, I have been given a bed with a pink dresser In the hothouse Joining the Concord Public Library: the walls and roof are Glass and my privacy comes from the apple-geraniums, Violets, ferns, marigolds, and white mayflags. I get my meals With the janitor and his wife and all of the books are mine To use. I scour, sweep, and dust. I hope you don’t think of me As a runaway? I remember your kindness, Your lessons in reading and writing on the piazza. My journey was unusual. I saw some of the war And it was terrible even far up into the North. My first fright was at a train depot outside Memphis Where some soldiers found me eating not yet ripened Quinces and grapes, they took me prisoner: first I helped some children carry tree limbs to the woodbox Of the locomotive, then, I was shown to a gentleman In the passenger car who was searching for his runaway Negress in a purple dress; he wouldn’t identify me, And I was thrown in with about forty stray blacks into An open boxcar and soon we were moving, next to me A man was sucking on the small breasts of a girl Maybe twelve years of age, across from them A sad old woman smiled as she puffed on an old cigar end, By afternoon she was dead, her two friends Just kicked her out so that she rolled down into pasture Frightening some hogs that ran off into a thicket. The girl next to me whimpered and shook. Those quinces Just ran straight through me and all I could do was Squat in one corner that was supplied with ammonia-waters And hay. We were given that night Confederate uniforms To mend and when the others slept I dressed in three Shirts and trousers and leapt from the moving train, The padding helped some but I couldn’t walk the next day. I hid in a shack that seemed lonely but for a flock Of turkeys, some young hens, and a corncrib with tall Split palings. The next morning from a hill I watched field-workers on a tobacco plantation, it took Two men to carry a single leaf like a corpse from A battle scene. That night I found a horse with a bit In its mouth made of telegraph wire. He carried me up all The way to Youngstown.Chloe, you must Learn to swim in the pond and to ride the old sorrel.