(For Eric Killmonger)
A little boy stared in the clouds
Forgotten tales screaming loud
His word small and nothing wrong
It all shattered after too long
Stories of cities that touched the sky
Clans of people untouched by time
Hope soon filled his boyish dreams
But not everything was as it seemed
One night he came home and saw
His father dead, struck down by claw
Weeping over his fathers head
He begged him to stay, not leave him instead
Shattered dreams and shattered hopes
He held the myth achingly close
Alone, no one there to guide
He locked his humanity deep inside
Battling for a way to free them all
Seeking power and in deaths thrall
The world had taken everything away
And all in one single day
So he would take everything away from it
His soul a star no longer lit
Now he lay there quietly dying
His enemy close, no longer fighting
The world it seemed would take him too
His glittering eyes full of rue
There was nothing left for him here
Breathing ragged and full of fear
Finally he took his very last breath
And slipped away as his life left
And as the sun left the sky
The night descended with a sigh
The little boy was dead and gone
His life a sad and weary song.
-Roguesong-
-Esther L. Krenzin-

I am not Wakandian.

I wish I could look at a map and say
there that’s where my people came from.
Save money, board a plane, fly
to my ancestral home, and see what made me.

But Africa is a big place
and I’m not Kenyan, Nigerian or Ethiopian.
I have no claims to their past
and no right to their future.

All I know is I have some melanin, ***** hair,
and the knowledge that my ancestors blood and bones
set the foundation for a nation
that hasn’t made its mind up about me.

So sometimes I wonder what if my ancestors
had survived sugar fields instead of cotton.
Faced whips on the islands, instead of the south.
Would I then feel at home because I could look and know.

Or would that leave me emptier since here is still not there
and a claim to there would make me less here.
I guess until I figure this out I’ll take a made-up country
to be my made-up heritage

I am Wakandian