A Response: America During The Black Lives Matter Protest (America Belittles Me)

Trust is a hard candle to burn with no lighter in plain sight; 

you’re a sight for sore eyes and swollen thumbs pressing

against silky silver vibrating strings; strings slip through my frantic

fingertips and I can’t seem to flee the dismembered cracks; cracks 

underneath the door show tempered footsteps that prance

like poetical politicians; politics may compel me to peel

my virtuous brown skin to reveal the red disbelieving blood; 

I may bleed, but it’s no longer controversial to mistake red

for blue; blistering blue sapphire slippers shackle down marked

time on an occasional whim; whimsical music may stop playing

and we might hear a chime of protests; protesting my love

for disagreement and hurtful red thorns that taste like vanilla; 

vanilla scented candles do not hold a light to my bare skin.

Rebirthed— I am not naked;

I am not naked and dancing in the clear and ignored rain; the rain will 

not keep dancing in omission to pain and suffering; I shall no longer 

suffer at the hands of your performative love; my love is the human race,

they say; they say that my love is the human race, honey. Honey, did you 

hear me? They say that my love is the human race. If love is freeing human

bodies; if love is celebrated in liberated lace, covered in deep scarred

tissue marks—

Then why is my love screaming in silence? 

They race for time, play to be nice, and shut their mouths when words

become barred; barred and broken down into crumbled-up tea cakes

with milk to wash it down nicely; I can be nice. I can smile for the non-

existent cameras and bow down to the white lords; white lords who 

lead the fine young ladies upstairs to devour their overexposed 

tanned skin; skin so tan, it’ll erase my sisters from the block down

below;

below me, they say. They say, beneath me, they say. Did you hear that, 

honey? They say beneath me, before me, below me, and I praise my own

distance from reality; reality nestles beneath my rigid arms. Reluctantly,

it laughs. Reality informs me that the hands of the self-righteous 

will guide me through racial ideologies. In the face of the self-righteous:

I can save you, they say. They say, I’ll help you because you cannot help yourself. 

If only I could blink twice before detaching my head— running away 

from all fear; I shall run away from the sympathetic gaze. I shall make 

my way to The Capitol and plant my feet on ruined soil. I shall take

my time to waltz with my unearthed sisters;

we will waltz and forget all of the trauma around us; trauma won’t

make us closer. It cannot unite us. Let’s fight it, honey; honey,

did you hear me? Please, let’s fight the trauma and maybe we can go on

another day; another day of servitude wasted. Gone. Unrecognized.

And if I shall go silently, remember this; for this moment

is all that I have to remember my own misguided beauty by; 

sing to the ancestors harmonizing in white— a synchronous 

vision never bruised. Hold their hands as we make our way

in America;  

wash away the dried dirt 

beneath our fingertips.