Connections seem to slip
through my hands.
And I feel myself disappearing
with every splish-splosh.

I feel paper thin,
Like if I'm put against light
I'm see through.
I feel like smoke,
As though I could evaporate with a puff of air.
I feel temporary,
As though my presence is remembered
In fits and spurts- never constant.
Have you ever been in a room
Full of people,
But felt completely and utterly alone?

White body kills Black body
But no body saw a thing.
Every body has an opinion
But no body has the truth.
White body thought that it could
Beat the blackness out of Black body
But Black body stayed black.
Black body cried out,
"Some body! Please! Help!
This violates ****** rights!"
But still, no body heard a thing.
White body has weapons
It inherited from its ancestors:
            Police
            White Privilege
            Justice System
            Freedom
            Hypocrisy
            Lies­
            Gun.
Black body had a weapon too:
           None
White body stays free, remorseless
While Black body lies in the ground.
White body's name is America.
Black body's name was Black Body.

Smile!
It's not so bad!*
Relations today are better than they were fifty years ago!
That's not a consolation because
**Our existence has always been an unfortunate one.

The beauty about being black
Is that I have tears and scars and
anxiety and violations and incarcerations
and fear and joy and love and
music and resilience and hope
and triumph and defeat and
defiance and perseverance and
intelligence and diligence and
adaptability and understanding
All woven through my being, my skin
My essence
That could not be stripped away
In 400 years.
I am a living embodiment of all
these emotions
Passed down from my ancestors
to my grandparents to my parents to
Me.
Black people cannot be brought down
Because we are the backbone of a nation.
We are the lifeblood of its people.
We possess a magic that no other people
Can attain because we attained it
Through suffering and more suffering
And more suffering after that when we
thought we couldn't possibly suffer any
longer.
We survive and will continue to survive
Because that is our creed, our way of life
We possess a rare entity
Unattainable to anyone else
It's strictly ours.
It's one of the few things we have been
able to preserve-
Magic.

My little brother will do certain things
In public
That I have to stop him from doing.
I can't explain to him why he can't
Or why it's wrong
Because I don't even know the reasons
Myself.
He's so used to people judging him
For his "invisible" condition
That he doesn't know that his visible one
Is being
Black.
His "invisible condition is called
"Autism."
He and I share that same visible condition
But my "invisible" one-
It's called, "Being conditioned to know
That my condition is being
Black."

It's not until recently
That I realize
How hard it's always been for you.
The moments I had taken for granted
Seem like fiction in my own made up fantasy,
But I know what it feels like.
You have always been yearning for a glimpse,
A taste, a sight
Of friendship.
It's not until now,
When I'm alone and friendless,
That I see how hard it must have always been for you.
I'm sorry for taking your pain for granted,
For never truly understanding
Until now.
*I'm so, so sorry.

My heart is constricted
By an emptiness
I can't shake.

What should I do?

What should I...

What should...

What?

We get told that Slavery was a lie
I’m crying on the inside
Because on the outside all you see is my complexion
But as Kendrick Lamar says, “Complexion don’t mean a thing.”
Learn from this
I’m not one to miss
There are so many like me
That get lost in the abyss
Of hatred
Of Racism
Of ignorance-of pride
I’m done getting tossed to the side
My feelings are relevant
They’re not fantasy
I just don’t understand why you can’t see-
Scratch that I do
Y’all don’t want to admit
That I’ve caught up to you
I know I’m the ****
You don’t want to hear the fact that you’re wrong
Ignoring a person’s struggles is making the white man strong
He wants this! He wants my pain
He feeds off my struggle, my cries for help are in vain
I try to ask for but get pushed aside
For the next black person to stand in line
Our feelings are legitimate
They’re like a covenant
Between what I want and what is now
Now we have black boys and girls slaughtered like cows
We don’t matter to this country
Our lives are dark matter
That’s why we chant “Black Lives Matter!”
Please just listen
I don’t know how much more I can take
I need someone to understand
That blacks are a dying race
Our culture’s being taken, assimilated
While millions of us are incarcerated-
Please listen!
I don’t know how much more I can take.

Tired of feeling broken
Tired of feeling helpless
Tired of looking at myself
And feeling stupid
Tired of feeling abandoned
Tired of feeling like a waste of space.
Just need to breathe
Focus on the positives
And keep going.

You are amazing.
You are more than the pain
More than the loneliness
More than the desperation.
You are more than their looks
More than their stares
More than Autism, Mitochondria Disease,
More than the seizures.
You are you
Which is enough.

Pap...
My limbs are lead
My mind is fogged
And the only light within
Is one thought:
"Keep going."
I rise higher and higher
The air becomes thinner
My ambitions become clearer
"Make it to the top."
The others will meet me up there
Except everything is quiet
My breathing is the only echo
Within the surrounding expanse of darkness
My numb fingers creep unto a ledge
I hold my hand out waiting
For help
No one is there
I push myself on top
Look around and see no one
The view is lonely without people
The sun's rays cascade over me
Their warmth feels colder alone
Success does not fill me
Loneliness does, though.
It **hurts

He looks out
Looks outside of himself
Looks out at the mirage
A world in which he is stuck
Within the confinements of himself
There are words he wants to say
But are trapped between his cage of a mouth
Words must be filtered and scattered and discarded
Through his mind
Like product in a factory
In the end, all that comes out is a
Frustrated cry, a swing of his arm and the confusion and a guilt-ridden apology afterward.
But he sees the outside in a different light
He sees it as a world outside of his own
It's a planet that must be travelled to by space ship
Luckily,
He is an astronaut
And he has people who believe in his rocket's take off.

I look back
In the fading pages of my storybook
And think of myself as a child:
Innocent, chubby, picked on, happy
Unaware of life, went with the flow, dependent
I needed people but I would push them away
I was afraid a lot
For my brother, his future
I loved him so much
Even if he didn't talk
And hit me sometimes
But I knew he was being controlled
By a beast, a monster
I still love him anyway
Even when he's a 14 year old
Pubescent, disgusting boy going on man.
I go to school and feel my heart
Sink deeper and deeper into my chest
My mind always reeling
And my soul always retreating into me
It's hard to be me
Because I have a fear of rejection
I have a fear of opening up to others
A fear that they will see my true colors
My dark, black colors
That turn my shine, into sorrow
I can't take that
I hide myself because I'm a coward
And I find it hard to like the way I look
And like the way I am
I am starting to disgust myself
And I keep asking myself
Every single day...
*What's wrong with me?

For the first time in my life
I know how hard it is
To show the majority
That it matters
There are people who look like me
Getting shot on the street
And left like a dog
There stories have been told many different ways
But I already know what happened
I know what the backlash will be
I will be apart of it
Because it's time out!
It's time out for young, black people being prejudiced!
People think that things are better because we can vote now!
Because Jim Crow is gone...
Then why does it still feel the same?
The black life matters!
Our history is too heartbreaking to be forgotten
It's too disturbing a history to be washed away
With the tears of the oppressed!
We were here from the beginning and we will be here
In the end
The black life matters
So why does it still feel like it doesn't?

Memories were made specifically for certain people
Their memories were planned out from the beginning
They would have friends and family beside them, and laughter that would
Float up from their hearts up through their mouths and into the universe
These memories would forever be captured into the person's brain
And there are some memories for others
That aren't for me
Memories that I am so close too
And some that cast a distant shadow over me
I love to build new memories
It gives my life joy and that deep heartfelt laughter
I get those memories sometimes
And they are the best times I've ever had
Memories like those are the ones I will treasure most
The ones I will tell my kids and grandkids
The ones the universe will know as Leie's memories
They will never be forgotten
They will not be pushed aside
They will forever stay my
Memories...

My chest feels hollow
My mind is racing
My head pounding
My feet tapping
I look around me
I see the smiles and laughter
Given between friends
I see the invisible bonds
They've created for themselves.

I'm tired of feeling alone
Of feeling by myself
Struggling silently
I'm tired of being the quiet warrior
I want to be the person
With real, true friends
Friends that I know will always be there for me
That I know will accept me for who I am.

I'm tired of keeping to myself
I'm sick of putting on a brave face
And most of all,
I'm tired of feeling less than
I'm more than what I seem to be
I'm more than what others think of me.

I can be outgoing
I can be social
I can make friends
I just don't know how to fit in anymore
I don't know how to adjust.

I see how "He" must have felt
A long time ago
I didn't understand because
At the time, I had "friends"
Now...
I just want to say,
"I'm sorry."