Dear Rosie

I wonder, what kind of black woman are  you?
Because as we discussed various -isms, you refuted your womanism, you refuted racism, you refuted sexism. You are "Rosie"

Dear Rosie
I want to know where you come from. Who taught you to tear down women that look like you, that came from a black woman's womb just as you did. Where did you learn to silence us in that confused mind of yours where you said our opinions irritate you and are worthless to your education?

Dearest Rosie
Tell me how the oppressed became the oppressor. Because as I look at your dark chocolate skin I am curious what you see when you look in the mirror. A reflection of privileged whiteness? You say oppression does not matter. You asks for facts. Well, statistics show us that people that look like you are dying whether you acknowledge your blackness or not. Women like you are being silenced and underrepresented in the public sphere regardless if you take it for face value. Women like us have lost sons to officers, husbands to cells, brothers to jails.

Dear Rosie
Wake the **** up. Each time you slice our tongues from the black reality that black women may not matter as much as they do in this safe space, each time you preach of your humanist kumbaya resolution that separates us from race gender and sexuality, each time you say our opinions do not matter, they win. The system wins. Because they'll use some token like you to represent our mass majority and say "She agrees with us so all black people do too." I refuse to be represented by a peer that denounces my womanism, my feminism, my black nationalism because it's not white enough for her (black) skin.
Not inclusive enough to a white population that has excluded people like me for centuries. It is not my duty to make some ******* feel comfortable with my blackness ,to relieve them of guilt when they've perpetuated guilt on me because of my blackness.

Dear Rosie.
Don't let them win.

I love a black man
I see his laugh across my face,
my childhood in his eyes.
I hear the paternal love each time he calls me "baby girl"
even though I'm pushing twenty
I love him because half of his DNA runs through my veins
just as half of his heart was once in my mother's hands.
Oh how I love him.

I love a black man
The last thing he said to me was "I love you"
before he passed the same week.
He was a lover raising an excess of sons and daughters
and fathering kids he was not the father to because
He was a lover.

I love a black man*
He's called me superstar since I was born and always
tells me how I get more beautiful each time I see him.
I remember how I ran into his athletic molasses brown arms each visit and how he always lifted me high above his head.
He fell in love with a lemon yellow woman and
thus I was born peanut butter all over.
His ears rest on the sides of my face, just as big as his
And I wouldn't trade them for any silence.
I can still hear him accidentally calling me by my mothers name.

I love a black man.
My partner, my equal, my friend.
Grateful for the hours on end we spent in late night conversations trying to figure each other's story
Tell me who you are
He was always better at showing
The big brother in him always saying his little sister is his best friend
Always at peace because he casts all his anxiety on the lord and is teaching me to do the same.
Noticing when I appear less than like myself
Always speaking through his actions until he says
I love you at random
I'm so lucky to love him.

I was taught to love a black man simply because I was loved by black men.
My father, my granddaddy, my granpaw, my friend.
I am so lucky to love them.
I am so lucky to be loved by them.

worth me walking at 11:30 at night to be with you come midnight just to be the first to tell you happy birthday.

worth the throbbing I feel between my legs when you hold me, pressing yourself against me so I can't think of anything else but this throbbing.

worth early mornings spent watching you sleep. Feeling you feel my back dimples, as if your hands are fully conscious even during your slumber. Pulling me in closer until our legs are completely intertwined and I have no choice but to give in to you.

You're worth me giving in to you.

I heard his voice before I saw him.
Just seconds before I was telling ol Asha
"He's annoying me. I didn't even talk to him today."
It was the first time in 4 months.

Just as the words left my mouth
I heard his voice telling someone he was coming to see me.
Me

I wondered how he'd known where exactly I'd be.
In my same ol corner, in my same ol chair.

He stayed there with me for four hours.
Sitting across a table we laughed until we choked
We revisited all the things we hadn't been able to say via text or FaceTime.

Oh how I missed my friend.
I vented about my struggles
We laughed at my tenderness.

We discussed sexuality, race, black women, black men.
We discussed our history, and how this moment was really all we needed.

"Remember that awkward talk we had?"
"Why would you bring that up?"
"I was so mad at you"
"Well we're here now"

And I'm just falling right here.

I love reading poems about love.
About sisters like me
finding love
failing at love
not giving up on love
tired of love
grateful of love
needy of love

I love reading about those people that change them.
In their words I find their love as if it's mine too.
They give me a safe space to share my love
or lack there of

And even if each week our opinion of love changes
I know someone out there will read about my love
or lack there of

This week my love lives.

"An impossible dream. Others dream that they are millionaires. I dreamt that a woman loved me."

"Cinderella was not written about the ***** woman."

"They would nod at my empathy and rarely point out that growing up did not mean and never has meant the same thing as getting better."

"Everyday she felt herself losing things it was unacceptable to mourn."

"There was love, and then there was suicide"

"She's the wrong kind of pretty, the kind that's soft but not fragile, the kind that inspires the impulse to touch."

There's something in you that intrigues me, but it's overpowered by an urge to pull away. I don't even have to pull anymore because it feels like a push. I've always wondered what it'd be like, being yours. But it always seemed like one of those lifelong crushes that just aren't meant to be cemented, not meant to be permanent.

It gets confusing though because you're the only person that can make me smile so fast when this heart is so angry. It's just that sixth grade girl in me all over again He noticed me, he noticed me

In reality anyone can be noticed, few remembered. I just wanted to be remembered, even if it wasn't as yours. It's always so easy when it's just the two of us in our own worlds. So easy to pretend that i matter so much. you're gonna make a great man out of someone one day waiting for this man I'm supposedly going to force to change his ways for me.

I never wanted that though. I wanted someone that I didn't have to worry about. Mine. A person that I can openly love without feeling ashamed, disloyal, secretive, or left out. mine

They've all had you.
And maybe they've all had me too.