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.

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,

The sun breaks through storm clouds and forms

double rainbows like echoes in the sky.

I stopped asking “Why?”

and started saying “Thank you” when I see you

“On the release sheet, it says

DEATH.”

Locked away like unwanted knick-knacks in an attic,

overcrowded like a slave ship with

cramped selves on top of cramped cells…

“To be blessed,”

said The Woman With The Issue of Blood,

“is to spend as much money on self-care as

I do on super plus tampons and extra-long, overnight maxi pads…

Sista friend, ‘member when

we barely knew each other?

Stuck with each other involuntarily,

tight smiles concealed rolled eyes and sucked teeth

til a fateful Saturday when we saw red and entered the ring,

You could never be me.

First, you’d have to

update your vocabulary. See,

I speak unique, eat and drink

words for breakfast and aperitif

they’re nutrient-dense and fiber-rich.

I’m nouveau riche,

top 10 percent,

MoCo girl, Nigerian,

I retract my previous statement

regarding sad poems.

The moratorium on sadness expressed

in couplets and rhyme

has reached the end of its time.