February 25, 2023 – Lucia Mae Pitts (1904-1973): If Ever You Should Walk Away

Lucia Mae Pitts – If Ever You Should Walk Away
from Ebony Rhythm. 1948

If ever you should walk away from me
With set, immobile face, and close the door
On all that has been ours or yet might be,
So will the door remain, and swing no more.
Its hinges shall grow rusty with disuse,
Its boards shall crack and mould with coming age;
Yet I inviolate will keep, and muse
On things here in our book, save that last page.
The dark may come and settle ’round my room,
The close scent as of musk bear down on me;
Still will I strain within the gathering gloom-
With heavy, burning eyes, will strain to see.
Until the dark descends to lift no more,
Inviolate I’ll sit, and watch the door.

Lucia Mae Pitts was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She moved to Chicago where she edited a poetry page for the Chicago Defender, a prominent black newspaper. She lived in New York during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance and moved to Washington, DC where she continued writing poetry and working as a secretary. She published poems in both the Challenge and Opportunity magazines and she was anthologized in Negro Voices (1938) and Ebony Rhythm (1948). She worked as a secretary at Tuskegee Institute and she served in the Women’s Army Corps during WW2.