Daddy said to love him, all it would take was a touch
To not disappoint him, a kiss would do
That to be a man, first you have to know how to please one
If not, then he'd tell mommy and she'd hate me

Mommy drinks her days away
Doesn't see when daddy's too rough, when daddy leaves marks
Mommy's too busy seeing the pretty colors I can't see
Says the happy pills are our little secret,
That the silver water is to help her heal;
Tells me to go bother my big brother instead

My big brother,
Oh he's always ignored
Not even when he comes home with trophies and medals do they care
They don't even see the slices on his wrists...
Or maybe they just don't care
Maybe that's why big brother decided to watch me from above
Maybe that's why big brother gave me one last hug, one last 'I love you'
Before he closed his eyes for the last time
To sleep the eternity away

As for me
Oh the years have passed but I still have a smile on my face
Daddy's in prison being treated like how he treated me
Now he'll know how to please a man, I know I do

Mommy's six feet under
The pretty colors were too strong
The funny smoke didn't want to say good-bye
So it took mommy with it
And now neither can hurt my lungs nor my heart

But here I stand as I place flowers on the grave of my cowardly brother
How long did it take before it all became too much?
Did he please daddy too? Is that why daddy would beat and hate him?
Did he see the pretty colors like mommy? Is that why he fell in eternal slumber?
Or was he too weak to endure? To survive with the filth left from our parents?

Now I walk away, free of sin
Free of love
Free of pain
Now, I'm all that's left of my broken family...

Like daddy, I now yearn for the touch of a male, but a man, not a boy
Like mommy, I know see the pretty colors, but I'm not shackled like she was by them
And like my big brother I too have matching scars on my wrists

There are some things
Too beautiful
To simply
Never
Let
Go

They stand tall and smile beautifully,
any gaps between their teeth is held together by
glue called fear of what could happen if they are
anything but perfect. This glue, it is strong and sticky
and unbelievable expensive, it costs both your pride
and your happiness
[but it's okay, because both would've been taken
anyway. This is America you are a girl and you are a
shade of black so dark it blends within the moonlight.
the skinny twig girl in your class will call you a slave and
you will bite back the salty and sour response threatening
to spill from the back of your throat, that she is the color
of cafe con leche left on the porch and dried too long from
the burning sun of the Caribbean sky; and when she and her
white-washed friends laugh you bitterly think, wow there's no
difference between her and every other ****** here.]
They are gorgeous. Lips so red they remind you of blood at
a nurse's office. Stomachs so toned you want to scream that
your color is not a trend, that your milky white and yet charcoal
black skin with small bumps easily mistaken for traffic signs
with how easily their colors change is not a beauty status. your
skin is not pretty. It speaks an oppressed language with eons
of history behind it like your great grandmother's blood that was
shed onto the white man's land after he conquered something so
precious it could never be given back and you carry that with you,
within the stitches of glass cuts you forcefully made onto your
black skin, sickeningly thinking that you weren't good
enough because you aren't them and inside the skeleton
of your body is your grandmother
and she was a warrior in her own right and you carry her within you
and inside it not something middle school girls can laugh at.
it not something bitter old white politicians can mockingly ridicule
and sarcastically apologize for. it is not something that a boy,
years later at a frat party can try and belittle,
as if saying you are pretty for a black girl makes you feel better.
your great grandmother's soul and the woman before her give you
that milky white and charcoal black skin that can only be described
as the sky at midnight, when everyone else in the small town
you live in is asleep but you are awake and it is beautiful.
it is a hurricane with an infinite amount of water,
it is warfare at it's most addicting point and it is cataclysmic,
and they have no right to spray the dark color of the moon
onto their skin and pretend that the sun does not exist
until it is advantageous for them.
They are pretty.
They are beauty.
They are white,
and you with your Dominican kinks and sunburned skin
are not and this is something that now you do not like
but within time you will come to love.