Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
art
Marlene Bailey Jun 2018
art
Today the teacher asked me what art was and I mentioned Him.

For me He was, is and will be art.

His hair, his eyes, his lips and his cheeks. His arms, his legs, his neck.

All He is art.

The way his hair moves through the air or the way complete idiocy makes him smile.

His seriousness and his bearing, his body when he sweat, the way he sings softly.

His voice.
His voice is so perfect for me.
Every word that comes out of his mouth is like thousands of babies laughing endlessly.

Even in his saddest moments, He is art.

The way he prefers to cry in a place where nobody sees him.
The way in which his words become deeper and with a darker sense.
The way his dark circles are presented by not having slept well at night.

His arms.
The way his arms hug me constantly.
The way he likes to move them just to get my attention (and he really does).
The way they trap me around the waist and carry me like a baby.

His lips.
The way he brushes his lips and mine making me want to kiss him.
The way he squeezes them when he's upset.
The way he kisses me again and again. Even in that way I don't get tired of him kissing me.

And his eyes.
His eyes are my favorite part.
Why? Because it is bad and good at the same time.
He can lie to me looking at me with those brown eyes.
It can make me lose control just by looking at me, but in the same way that it makes me lose control, it controls me.

He can make me cry with just looking at me.
He can make my life go a thousand laps just by looking at me.
He can make my heart stop just by looking at me.
And just by looking at me, I fell in love with him.

Do you know what's wrong?
I never knew him and never will.

But that's what art is about, to love the unknown.

And for me, He was art.
For me, He was a stranger.
Marlene Bailey Apr 2020
i feel.

disconnected
helpless
tiny

in agony.

i feel like the world is ending
but I have no one to turn to.
i feel very happy for a moment
and very sad to the other.
i feel like i can't do anything right
as if it were mud, as if it didn't hurt,

as if i was worth nothing.
this is exactly how i feel right now, not my best work but i needed to vent
Marlene Bailey Jun 2018
I fell in love with a black gay man,
and I knew he was gay...
I didn't know he was black.

You see, there are people that teach you how to think for yourself
and there are people that teach you how to think like them, that was my problem.

Those people taught me how to think like them,
so I was going to highschool thinking that white men were better than black men.

Every time a black guy approached me, I made it clear from the beginning that I didn't want anything beyond friendship.

And that's how I met Reginald.

The first black man I fell in love with and I know that I'm saying now that he is black but even so, I couldn't see the blackness in him.

He was the white boy that people talked so much about,
he was the dream boy of any living girl,
but he was locked in a black body that those same people didn't understand.

The first time, I saw a black man, a man who wanted more than friendship with me but who wouldn't.
In the end, we became friends
and very good ones.

That issue of black men not being part of my heart had gone to hell when I started getting to know Reginald better.

I started to love him.

For the love but above all for how they had taught me to think, I started to see him as a white man,
of high rank, with a good family and a magnificent sense of humor.

But then, I found out that my beloved Reginal was gay.
Ironic, right?
The only black man I had ever fallen in love with and it turns out that he is gay.

Still, I couldn't keep myself away from him,
I started doing everything I could so that we were always together
hoping that he would start to feel something for me...

It didn't.

And I don't blame him,
how was I able to notice his passion towards men but not remember that he was a black man?
How  couldn’t I notice that I fell in love with a black man?

Then I realized that the same people who had put such an idea in my mind were black people, people who had decided to surrender against white people and insist on thinking like them.

But they decided that,
they inculcated me that.

The day Reginald died at the hands of my brother, I noticed his blackness again.

And no, it wasn't because I had lost the love I felt for him,
but because it was my brother who taught me to think like him...
who taught me to think like whites.

I lost the love of my life because of my black brother's decision to think in the same way white people do.

Maybe I was the one who should have died at the hands of Reginald's sister
because he saw ME as a white man too the night that we, thanks to a drunken stupor, decided to be one while we were consumed in mutual pleasure without taking into account the consequences.

How will I be able to explain the death of his father to my son who is coming?

Should I tell him that his father died because he was a black man or that his father died because I saw him as a white man?

Should I blame my parents for teaching my brother to think like a white man or should I blame myself for paying attention to him?

Now I don't know who I fell in love with...
And I really think I will never know.
Marlene Bailey Jun 2018
There’s something about the black women in I.

There’s something about the black women in I that I can’t figure it out.
I wake up in my bed every morning wishing I could go out and spend time with my friends without any disrespectful ***** yelling at me “Ay, yo ma” or “What a ***** mama, let me taste you”.

I’m sure my name isn’t ay, yo ma.
I’m sure I am not your ma.

But, I used to blame myself for that. I used to tell myself that all those men were attracted to me because of my body. I used to tell myself that, if I ever get *****, it was going to be my fault.

Every day I’m inspired by all these black queens out there trying to save themselves from man speculation, but I seem to be more in the men side than in the woman side.

That's why I started to hate my body, but I was sure that my heart did not match what my brain said, what I thought.

Because of the men's disparaging opinion of me, I began to hate my body, the way I dressed, the way I spoke, the way I expressed myself ... the way I wrote.

I used to open up to others so that they understood what was happening, but the women I spoke with seemed to be as much in agreement with men as I was. Now it was not just the men calling me "*****" because of how I dressed…now it was also the women making me feel bad.

I realized that women could also be sexist.

All this time I have been hating myself for the opinion of people who could be worse off than me, whether economically, socially, physically or mentally. And I knew it.

Still, there was something about the black woman in I that I couldn’t figure it out.

I'm not going to lie, I got dressed again like I did before, I talked about all the subjects I wanted without fear of being classified as a ***** or a ***** by the people I was talking to or the people who were listening to me. Now I was following the example of all those black women who inspired me. I felt free and liberated, I did not fear the critical eye of all those men and women who made me feel bad about myself.

But we all have a weakness.
My weakness was myself.

I no longer needed anyone to tell me all those horrible things that people used to tell me, because I told them myself. I woke up every day telling me how disgusting I was and how no one would be able to love me because of the way I am, because of the color of my skin, the way I think, because I am myself.
My friends tried to help me, giving me advice, telling me things like "Hope you realize how valuable you are so you won't let anyone underestimate you", but the only one underestimating me was myself.

I always try to be strong for those people who do love me, I always pretend that I love myself so they don’t worry, I always keep in mind that I don’t want my daughters to go through what I am going through.

It's difficult, I know, but I have to do it.
Maybe that's how I will learn to love myself as my friends love me. Maybe I can overcome all this and be the great woman I want to be, maybe I can teach my brain that what it says about me does not affect me.

I am sure that I will achieve it.

But even there, there's going to be something about the black woman in I that I can’t figure it out.

And I will never will.
I wrote this in 2017 after a man told me I was cute for a black girl
Marlene Bailey Jun 2018
To think that I wrote to you when you were never mine.

Until now I thought that we were meant for each other, until now I realize that it was never like this and until now I get to see that you only used me.

I hope you had fun.

I alway[s] wondered why the illusions get to me so fast.

Why I give love to anyone and I fall in love without thinking, why whenever I told you I love you, I believed your "Me too".

And until now I realize that I was an idiot.

That I am an idio[t].

For the simple act of falling in love with you, for the simple act of falling in love alone.

"All my friends tell me that I should continue, but I am sinking into you."

Plunging into your thoughts, sinking into the insomnia that you cause d[a]y by day.

Or I just miss you.
Although I guess you already know.

Likewise, it doesn't do any good if you know it if you can't do an[y]thing about it.
I was so in love with this guy...he ****** my bestfriend.

— The End —