What I want to know is why?
Why am I told to remember the tragedy of 9/11, but when I bring up the tragedy of my people once enslaved, I am told that it was years ago and I should “get over it”?
Why when I make a joke at a Caucasian friend’s expense does his face grow disgusted and he spats the word racist at me, then turns around and make a joke at a black man’s expense and expects me to laugh?
Why am I told that I am “boring” or that “no one likes being around an angry black woman” when I rise up to speak about the obstacles all people of color face in the modern society?
Why is it that my Caucasian friends are allowed to rely stories of being called racist with voices grim and shocked, but if I ask, “Well, were you being racist?” they look at me as if I’ve offended them?
Why is it a normal thing for people of color to rise and speak about their experiences of being a minority, only to have a Caucasian person slap a metaphorical hand over their mouth by saying, “You’re not the only one who’s experienced racism”?
Why as a child growing up was I taught by society that darker skin was less desirable, that if I was dark I shouldn’t wear pastel bright colors, that my blackness isn’t worshipped, but now in modern day society I am forced to watch Caucasians wear weave, get braids, do things they consider “being black” and have praise rain down on them?
Why should I have to listen to my Caucasian friends use the word “*****” as if their ancestors didn’t pronounce the word the same way someone would call a dog a mutt?
Why when I asked my Caucasian friend to explain why her crush wasn’t her type, she mentioned his blackness not as a worry that someone might not agree, or because years ago it wouldn’t be allowed, or as a concern that the way the modern world seems to be against him, but as if his blackness deemed him less dateable?
Why?

I'd like you more if you stopped kissing the ribbons of scars on my arms  
Feel the cuts beneath your lips only to come away with a ring of blood coating your mouth
Tell me you love me while we stand in a puddle of my sins
Wrap my limbs around your body and fill my corpse with your affection
You'll have to worship me harder if you want to hear my heartbeat
Many have tried before you, if you fail you won't be the last
You'll destroy yourself on my jagged edges

it's much easier to let you see what's under my clothes
than to let you know what makes me smile
letting you physically enter me is so much safer
than allowing you to probe my innermost fears
hearing you tell me that I feel good
is lighter on my heart than hearing you say you love me
*** is the closest I will permit you to get,
my vulnerability when I'm naked is easier to defend than you getting to know me

I had an English professor tell me that love was hard to write.
At first, I scoffed at her. I'd written about love almost all my life.
But then I realized that I'd only been writing about what I thought love was.
I wrote about men who put their hands around my neck all the while thinking of how easy it'd be to snap it.
I wrote about people I'd considered my friends who held their hands out to me for help only to turn their backs when I asked the same of them.
I wrote about people who came into my life with promises of warmth and understanding, but took my clothes off and never helped me put them back on.
I thought love was supposed to hurt because it was all I'd ever done. In all honesty, I don't know what love is.

Most people believe that if you're a writer, you're probably carrying a pen and notepad to jot down everything and anything that happens or slithers into your head
But I have never done these things.
I never wanted to be the writer whose words were laced with pain and anguish, whose words tasted bitter and hateful.
I wanted to write about beauty I had never experienced, I wanted people to believe that I knew Happiness and had known her a while,
but I am not that writer.
So my skin suffers the fate of a writer who cannot speak or type the plethora of emotions of what I cannot call a "life".
My skin holds years of grief and torment, lashed across my wrists like religious scrolls relaying of past tortures.
My skin carries my battles in the form of sharp injuries, telling everyone that although I am smiling, I do not know peace.
I wish I could apologize to my body for forcing it to carry this narrative of despondency within me.

I call you mine even though you once made me cry so hard I felt like my head was becoming undone

I associate you with myself because you’re one of few who can grip my heart and render me useless all while not being within touching distance

You’ve never touched my neck and yet the prints there match the shape of your hands perfectly

The air between us is so cold that I can’t move and my entire body trembles, warning me to get away

I call you mine but in all honesty when you sank your teeth in you staked your claim

she recounts her life with the lovers she's had,
reliving adoration as she counts them off on her fingers
she showcases their best qualities
I cannot upstage her
I recount my life with prescription bottles
plastic and pharmacies
the time I swallowed all I had because I wanted to be happy
while she recounts, I relapse

i've been harboring pain for years on end, served up dishes in various ways, having to mask the disgust I feel when it arrives in droves

people make food to try and heal your despair, and lately all they can seem to make is hurt and so my heart knows nothing but the taste of it

mouth full of anguish and blood and when it opens all that comes out is garbled pleas yet no one can hear

"how are you?" but if I told you you wouldn't know what to do, how to fix it, my suffering makes you uncomfortable and yet

if i died, what would you say?

I'm sorry boss, I can't come in today.
No no, I'm not sick. At least not in the way you think. No you see, I've gone too far again and made a mess of myself.
I don't want the customers to peer at my arms and see strands of skin hanging like ribbons from my wrist.
I don't want them to have to hear me mourning.
I'm sure it'll scare them off to hear an adult cry like a small child.
No, I'm sure that I can't stomach this pain any longer.
You see, I've taken more than the suggested amount of pills.
This call won't run much longer.
Boss, I don't think I'll be coming in tomorrow either.
I simply must rest.

"When someone gives you something, you always say thank you"
I look at
my unpaid hospital bills
my unpaid therapist bills
my empty prescription bottle, due for a refill two weeks ago
my scarred wrists
my trembling hands
my broken relationships
and I turn to my mother and say
"Thank you"

i am meat
i'm useful only for consumption

stunning, incapacitating
"i'll split you in two"
you're killing me!

how would you like to dress my flesh?

grinding
am i tender enough?

bleeding
put me on display
i'm just a trophy
am i the best piece of meat you've ever had?

It's easy to blame the way the planets are moving
When you've lost your faith in a god who only seems to neglect you
And so your fingers trace the outlines of constellations and track retrogrades
In order to understand why your life has never been in sync