I could be
Still.
But the words never will.
Stop
Writing themselves.

"Thoughts spill over as ink to a quill..."

When I'm in the ground I'll
Still
Reside in the words that I write.
Until

My blood dries.
And the universe has had its
Fill
of what I have to offer.

Unearthing a few grains of soil could create sinkholes
Or create more solidarity
The ones that grow and stand tall
Are ripped out and harvested for sustenance

We live in it
grow in it
sustain it.

Our bonds are like packed soil,
porous but poreless
in appearance
a state of perpetual disturbance

With every handful forcefully taken
endless grains fall in on themselves.
To save face
save race.

The wind doesn’t blow through their hair like it does the others.

It meanders through the curls of our melanated mothers.

It carries heavy accents infused with both love and suffering

over badly connected telephone lines

and the language barriers of anglocentric confines.

It navigates their thick 4c forests

as do the rigid combs they brandish to govern expanding crowns

that sit above scalps which resemble

the most polished oak.

Occasional retreats into my mind
became regular visits.
Then I became a permanent resident
and so, nowhere else felt like home. Nowhere else could.
Always just inside.
Inside the outside.
Or rather, what the outside had made of me.

Inside pain
Inside scars
behind dark eyes
that had long since lost their stars.

Hoarding pessimism and harbouring cynicism
mistaking resentment for activism,
unrefracted anger through a hollow prism,
locking arms with isms and schisms.

The world knocked all hours
I would look through the peephole, but never open the door
The glass on it was stained bloodshed
A panorama of the world overwhelmingly red
but blue, in 1803 on a Dunbar riverbed.

Once, I opened the door  
the world crawled into my pores.
pain and profanity stretching in my skin
wearing me, tearing me.
eating away at an empath, of course.
I was told that my mind and skin needed apathy to reinforce
I am to stop the world from putting me on all fours.
My nature does not allow for me to be so coarse.
So for now,
I close my doors.