Static fills my right hip, crrrrsppppp crrrrsppppp!

Begging for a kiss, a loosening.

Despite her shallow roots, my Hoya Hindu rope

has grown peduncles—

I rudely request, require and desire a refrain from chronic pain

because this belligerent, bony, buss-down bundles to her buttcheeks b*tch

is insane, bringing broken bridges and invisible incisions,

I stare at the sky

and instead of asking “Why?”

I whisper, “Thanks”

and drop tears as tithes.

i know how you work, i know just who you are,

a leech tryna suck the glow up out of me.

don’t you know it’s genetic,

i know you had to act like a woman

and think like a man when you were still a girl.

i know you had to shrink your bones

and turn curves into lines lest you tempt.

I balled my fists up and assumed a fighting stance.

i couldn’t see his hands.

i skipped around the ring to look menacing.

He appeared to do nothing.

Oh you, black-black!

They say under full moons,

Black girls shine blue.

Girl, I love the way that skin sparkle on you.

A squatter lives in my shoulders

she tore down the drywall

and built boulders,

armor for words of judgement to pierce less

That feeling of foreigners invading my temple

hunts me.

I am hunted by emptiness behind the detectives’ eyes.

I am hunted by the ugly yellow linoleum floors

I desired to be pillow, soft and unassuming.

Nobody hates pillows.

If I could stuff my tummy with white feathers,

there’d be enough cushion, enough down

Bald head, chemo girl ain’t had no hair to curl

threw up, grew up, I just bout glew up

Needed to stop the inner control freak

Stopped drumming for a while, let God control the beat.

On my chest sit

bags of sand.

Almost 40-year-old version,

me with artificial titties.

I actually thought I had to earn love—

keep my brows arched and teeth white,

suck my lips too thin for fear that they’d be

too big, too Black for you.

Forget the men who saw buds on your chest and declared them breasts.

Forget the rain showers and the smell of hot guilt rising from pavement.

Forget the new moons in the sky, the clouded nights of hidden stars.

Light skin, brown skin, dark skin, caramel—

definitions of skin tone live in a tin of sin

akin to a pin pulled from a hand grenade.

“No Woman, No Cry” personified,

Black woman with the thickest hide,

skin slick to slip off insults and pride.

CURIOSITY

Question everything.

CONSPIRACY

Question everyone except yourself.

My trauma think she grown, but she ain’t.

Sweet sixteen she’ll be this year—

a child who is heard, but not seen

she whispers through grinded teeth and creaky knees…

Years from now,

we’ll discover that

all the runaway dogs and cats

reported in the community forum

of the Ring Home security app

The back yard filled with sound.

Birds of different species tweet as one.

Collaborating against a common enemy,

they fly swiftly from tree to tree,