Ladylike

It is so strange to me that men who were once owned now want to own a woman, a black woman.  I can’t seem to understand the desire to own something or someone rather whom you cannot comprehend.  That’s like owning a saxophone you can’t make sing.  Why keep or own anything and anyone if you cannot seek out its purpose?  Why would you ever build a cage around something that was meant to fly?

As a Black woman, I don’t remember sitting in the palms of hands that were waiting for me to lift off.  I do remember though being smothered by arms that wouldn’t let me measure my own wing span in an air space I could call my own.  Trapped between heavy and hairy legs, I became the property of men with less pennies than sense.  How confusing it is to be born by yourself and yet yearn for the heat of another human being so much so that you end up a mockery of your own dead flesh.  Nonetheless I had many masters and endured several lashings probably because I found it quite contradictory to be a house slave to a man that never owned a house.  But these are only exaggerations of  a few sleepless nights with some very energetic men.

For a long time, sex trapped me in its ownership.  As long as you found your way inside of me, you found yourself wrapped up around several ideas of thought that were no longer under my control.  This is not to say that I was submissive but more so easily convinced that your word was better than my own.  I look at men today as gatekeepers to lands I don't necessarily need to tread on.  They are so damn convincing with their dimples and their baritone voices in the moments right before the sun comes up.  A man can convince you that living in his box is better than living out of your own.  I am in a constant state of envy of their power to control the mind by starting with the body.  It is my understanding that sometimes when a man lies on top of you, it can help you form the habit to take things lying down.  But what do I know?  Like many women, it's not the weight of our emotional baggage we're carrying. It's the weight of the men we physically can't let go.  I don't even think we really have trust issues, in fact, I think we trust too much.  I think we give our love away too soon, I think we make breakfast too often for a man that has not dug in the hot dirt to pick the very vegetables we prepare.  I just think we do too much sometimes for men who don't do nearly enough.  And so we end up as indentured servants, working hard to pay off a debt of some kind, hoping at the end of our service we'll be free enough for him to keep us around.  I can't tell you what goes on in the male mind because I haven't heard much from it over the years.  Just being honest.  I mean I've heard what men think universally but as a man?  For a man to come up with a unique concept about loving a woman and remaining in love with that woman while being faithful and understanding to how human that woman is, I haven't heard much about it.  I've heard they want a lady, but how ladylike can we be after being dragged through the mud, videotaped for his visual liking and confronted by three other women having done the same?  I just don't know how much of a lady I can be when they act like being a lady is synonymous to being weak.  

I wish more men would appreciate the strength of a woman in her speech rather than in the curve of her spine.  I wish more men would understand that yelling in an argument doesn't mean you've won because I've been yelling every night while you enter my secret garden and I haven't even won your respect.  So as far as being a lady, I adore my ladylike qualities.  I don't burp in public, I try not to wear see through clothing and I always have my hair done.  But…one thing about being a lady is to recognize when a man is or IS NOT in my motherf.cking presence.