Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day 
Nikki Giovanni

Don't look now 
I'm fading away 
Into the gray of my mornings 
Or the blues of every night 

Is it that my nails 
keep breaking 
Or maybe the corn 
on my secind little piggy 
Things keep popping out 
on my face or of my life 

It seems no matter how 
I try I become more difficult 
to hold 
I am not an easy woman 
to want 

They have asked 
the psychiatrists . . . psychologists . . . 
politicians and social workers 
What this decade will be 
known for 

There is no doubt . . . it is 
loneliness 

From Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (Harper Perennial, 1980)