growing with up with someone’s reflection is a battle- a wounded stain, your groomed to their memories. your gaze is burried , dead to the forseen. your wonder in her praise , while your shadow flee.. invisibility is invited.

People look in a different way
what they don't see everyday.

That's why
I react like this
to your compliments.

monotone voices hold
an element that glistens
in the light
of worldly havoc.
peace can be found
when one listens
to the simple
black and white.

I’m broken like a kicked indoors.
No dents are left, but the pain stays
I want to heal,
I don’t know-how.

Sometimes, I am in love with myself.
I force them to witness my love for my melanin
because they would love for me to hate my melanin.
I know that I am seen, but I want to be heard, 
The first amendment allows me to speak, but they refused to hear a word-
that comes from my mouth.
My lips stereotyped as too black.
My diction too proper to act like this,
yet my slang is too ghetto to act like that...
Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to be white.
I hate being stared at when I speak in Spanish.
I never know if it's in disgust or in comfort, 
because the sound of the double "r" rolling off of my tongue
sounds like the ricochet of the bullets they fire from their guns.
Since they no longer can enslave us like animals, they slaughter us
because, "if I can't have you no one can."
I refuse to be put down.
I refuse to shutdown.
My brown skin threatens,
and you all should be afraid.
Because I will banish your negativity with my Latin American flow,
speaking in Spanish with the Bachata tempo filling my veins.
My Ebonics is iconic, 
and I refuse to be put in a box when the world is a sphere.

I... am more... than this.

When we first met I’d write you love notes
Leave them scattered around your room.
When we first met I would stay up all night laughing, not yet tired from the lack of sleep.
When we first met every time you kissed me I could feel that you loved me then.
That was what seems like forever ago.

Nonsense nonsense
wants to cause trouble
No toil or trouble,
Will burst the impermeable bubble
Because nonsense nonsense
Can't cause trouble,
Neither penetrate
That beautiful bubble
Love, and kindness
Stand a chance, as these
penetrate any surface
with feeling or nice remarks.

© 2020  Carol Natasha Diviney

Umbrella stop this pain, of cold wet rain
Soaking through, and causing pain
Protect me from this cold, and stagnant rain
So I may heal, protected by the Umbrella
Vane.

© 2020  Carol Natasha Diviney