You romanticized the struggle
And wrote explicit love letters addressed to my oppressor
Placed me at the front lines of a movement that doesn’t give a **** about me and my womanhood.
Ain’t I a woman?
Why don’t y’all defend me?
I don’t really need you to save me.
But, I want you to care enough to try.
I’m worn out from viewing Black bodies splattered on the news.
Sometimes, I cry at night.
Oftentimes, it spills over into the day.
I don’t tell anybody.
I’m still grappling with vulnerability.
You left me raw and exposed.
*** out.
Hung to dry.
Speaking of hangings...
...I don’t have any words.
I don’t get the privilege of having my hashtag trend.
I want to know if Black Women were supposed to be included in this revolution.
I’m pro black and pro woman, so I’m losing 2 wars at the same time
There’s no end in sight.
Sometimes kinfolk be arm and arm with the oppressor.
Why aren’t you in the trenches with me?
You **** right I’m angry.
I planned the march.
I coordinated the rally.
Now, I gotta teach your sons to validate me?
**** your respectability politics.

What happened?
Long after language has faded
And our customs are forgotten
and we just don’t do tradition anymore
Our existence seems so alien in our own nation of birth.
Is this ours?
What do we make of it?
We are here now.
Here.
Now.
Where is here? When is here?
I need you to answer me. A rough approximation will do.

Question. How did we get here?
I don’t remember.
When did we leave there?
I have a confession.
I’m not sure where there is or how to locate it on a map.
Tell me, when we were first there...who did we live amongst? And dine with? And laugh with?

I like to romanticise our last whereabouts.
I imagine we existed when/where black was beautiful
I think there and here, then and now, all merged into one and we somehow lost all concept of time and place.
As kings and queens, we had this luxury.

Follow up question: Why did we leave?
My memory often fails me.
My recollection of events is a little fuzzy.
Sometimes I have flashbacks.
Of brown and black bodies. Distorted. Damaged. Broken.
I also remember water. I remember drowning. Sometimes the hyperthermia set in before I could.
But this hurts, so I try to quiet these thoughts.


But now we’re here.
Or at least I’m here.
But I never really left there.
I’ve no return ticket.
And I’ve misplaced my itinerary.
So, I guess I'll be here awhile.

You’ve alienated yourself from the rest of the world and now you're all alone.
Aren’t you?
Not a soul to hear you cry or a body to hold you steady
But you seem to like it that way, don’t you?
Women like you were never made to be lovers or mothers.
Never learned the meaning of a symbiotic relationship.
Or perhaps you did but never cared for one.
Women like you were never taught to love-neither yourself nor anyone else
Perhaps that's why you spend the days cursing your stretch marks and spend the nights cursing men who dare try to love you
Women like you don’t know what it means to build something from the ground up.
Only to destroy.
Only to damage.
Only to break something down until it lies in shambles
Women like you are good at that sort of thing. Only because you practice.
Women like you don’t know cold nights. Because they're all cold. Don't know good mornings.
Because you seem to wake everyday.
Women like you..women like our mothers...women like me were meant to exist by ourselves.
And that’s sort of fine.

To my first love,
you sampled parts of me
and made a meal of my innards
you picked your teeth clean
and spat out the gristle
then left the scraps
hastily folded in your napkin