"So" the girl in the mirror says, tilting her head at me,
"It seems we've learned something"

If you don't want to look beyond your bubble, you won't see at all
If you want to be in pain, your eyes will start to ache
If you want to wade in darkness, the ugly will fill your sight
If you want only to believe in good, the beauty will blind you

And if you want to see the truth?
Then you open your eyes to everything
And even if you don't like it, you will see what you seek

"So it seems we've learned something" the girl in the mirror sighs,
"You poor, pretty, broken soul
It seems you finally know
You're all beautiful, ugly, hurt and scarred
You are all all of these and you are nothing"

We are nothing other than what we choose to be
So it seems I've learned that we will see what we seek

**I choose to see you as who you are, and not as who I want you to be

Pressed between two walls
of written words;
Barely breathing between paragraphs
of love and hate;
Drying out between words
of confusion;
My petals are dropping
and we are none
the wiser.

I made it another day without you here with me.
I wonder how many more days I will have to go without you.
Sometimes I think about how my life was when you were here.
My life got worse and I stopped living after you weren’t here anymore.
I know you’re out there somewhere living life, breathing, eating and laughing.
While I mourn you, I will always miss you.
I will always love you.

Because of me.* She let me stand, snow falling off my bare legs like a shower of ash. Because of us.
What us is there left to lie about... My legs tensed to run. **Who can lie about what is in plain sight?

She was a crescent moon never completely lit
She imagined someone out there would find her and strike a match
She never considered it might hurt
This moon hid from most things
She orbited around a planet that was so unfamiliar to her
She knew others like her existed galaxies away
It made her feel both lonely and special.

The moon befriended stars
She sometimes wished she was small and bright and fleeting
But she was large and slow

One day one of the stars started mocking the moon with his light
He would shine right in her eyes and tell her she was nothing

The moon gradually grew smaller
It only looked within itself with shame
Finally, there was just a tiny spec

The whole world burned.

antagonistically I am alive

Languish is a two laned road

Misogyny be my name and my role
Pride be my form

The sins of my brothers and my sisters
they be here no more
When my blood rises from the dead
Ebonics will overcome phonics And our lives will be spared

I am done playing politics
done being your diplomat
if you want the olive branch go get it yourself

I am done acquiescing to your decisions and demands
I am prepared to throw up my hands
All I want is to be left alone with my kin
All I want is for my diction to not define who I am
All I want is for peace not to be left a dream

We as a whole are taught that dreams can become reality
That america is a country created and shaped by our thoughts
Yet our reality is becoming nothing more than a nightmare
Someone tell me who thought of this?
How can we turn our reality from the nightmare it has become into our dreams
let us be honest it was never a place for my people
But since we are here can we not claw each others throats out and get back to the problem at hand?