Something about the music.

Even though I was born on American soil, America was still a foreign queen to me.  I saluted her and praised her but I had no idea what it meant to be of her.  So I listened to rap, hip hop, freestyle battles - all of it - to hear what America sounded like.  I wanted to know why she made people cry, why she left some people to die and why so many were walking around hungry.  

So my relationship to music relates to my own identity, what it meant to be black and American - two things that don't fit very well together.  The music gave me a definition of self, something to cling on to when the reflection didn't seem to fit the spiritual.

Music.  It was the first to understand me and for that I owe it recognition.

Thank the worthy

melissa
you love me more than i deserve
my former self and my future self thank you in abundance for that

The Politics of Compassion

i appreciate you mira
for making it your job to remind the world that brown girls and boys have struggles that are often ignored, overlooked, abandoned, misrepresented and misunderstood
but i thank you for understanding that surviving all of those things is a community effort

The right hand

thank you tiffany
for teaching the intimacy of friendship
my soul always seems to find its way into your open arms

he's not that heavy, he's my brother.

à la teddy.
you know why the caged bird sings.
i've grown to your melody. thank you for the song in my bones.

Gracias

to the lightskinned girl named sioban.
i wish you knew what your own miracles felt like.
maybe one day, i'll write about them so you have an idea.
thank you.

But thank you.

thank you to dunni.
who believes my wisdom is as beautiful as my womanhood.
my angel with an afro for a halo.
God is her hairdresser. no one else must touch her crown.

Gratitude

thank you to my ex.
because you didn't realize my worth, you left me.
left me with enough time to calculate it for myself.

Appreciation

thank you quadir.

for being the sun i can bloom under.

for spending six years in my story.

for being a constant reminder that my evolution was indeed happening.

thank you.

Fifty Percent

press play...


I don't memorize anything but your smell so please excuse this piece of paper covering our entire relationship before me.

I stand here before you today taking 50% of the blame for us not working, for the failure of our bones rubbing into each other until they made dust, for the failure of our lips spewing more curse words than goodbye kisses, for the failure of having sperm and eggs and still unable to build a human better than ourselves.  I claim 50% of that, my love and I tax myself heavily for the charge of not loving you correctly.  Today, my hands are empty with the scent of you.  The lines across my palms are telephone wires that cannot bring us enough service to converse anymore. I stand before you with arthritis in my fingers from the cramps of writing you love letters every day.  I just wanted to make sure your baggage had reminders of good times in it. I mean, I always knew you would leave or I would leave or we'd leave each other in picture frames and text message conversations both of us would be too afraid to delete or remove.  I wanted to tell you that honestly, I wasn't that honest.  Your vagueness angered me because I knew far too well what was submerged behind smoke and mirrors.  I knew all too well what missing details meant and how we squeezed men and women into the crevices of what we called our busy lives.  I want to apologize for not apologizing enough.  

My perfume still lingers in your leather.  Strands of my hair are still tangled into the cotton thread of your pillows.  My dress lays in your closet right where you buried me and all that you felt for me.  I buried you too, into the corners of my mind where even God has learned not to disturb.  I can't even bring myself to mourn you aloud, can't bring myself to say that this kind of forever is permanent - the kind of forever that does not include you.  I look at all the energy channeled into something I could actually own, something I could look at and define as success.  I give you 50% of the profit called my womanhood.  I charge you 50% of the debt of wounds I've gathered loving, hating and missing you.  I won't bill you for the funeral I had for you, though it was condemning to rest my hopes and dreams six feet under the ground, it was freeing.  It was freeing to give you back to God.  I'm sure He needed an angel more than I needed a  marriage that would have ended in divorce anyway.  This is not to remind you that you are loved.  This is to acknowledge that you are unloved by me today, that my soul cannot wrinkle to your excuses or your memories.  My insides cannot churn into butter at the sight of skin.  My breath can no longer escape me when the sun hits your pupils like silver bullets into the flesh of men during World War II.  My steps cannot soften afraid to half step on your ego.  I cannot love you this way.  I cannot miss you tomorrow or the day after that.  I cannot love you.
I cannot.
And I wish for one thing - I wish for you to stop loving me enough that you visit me in my dreams.  You are not welcome here.  My heart is an international destination, its borders are closed off to the import of you.  This space is not US territory.  Please. Really leave me. Put on your shoes and run till your feet bleed and then keep running.  I will run the other way.  I will take 50% of the race in order for us to find separate finish lines.

Please.
Thank you.
Freed birds.
Shedding snakes.
Quiet snowfall.  
Erupting volcanoes.
Cracked sidewalks. 
Rough oceans.
Estranged lovers.
Don't worry about me calling you.  We can only call on the dead when we're ready to join them.
C'est la vie.

Neckties

I want to get you a necktie for Christmas.
That sounds incredibly simple and somewhat cliché
But I want to get you a necktie because neckties remind me of love
And all too often when you put a necktie on a boy, it reminds him too much of a noose
Suffocating a son not ready for love, a king not ready for his crown 
But when worn right and when the knot is tightened by loving fingers, the necktie is an adornment
A statement to the world that this morning, someone dressed you with love, even if that someone is you
The necktie rests gently next to collarbone vibrating from the power of your voice, protecting your Adam's apple because whatever you give a man, he consumes, even if it is sin
I want to give you a necktie for Christmas.
Something that will slow your morning down just a little bit so that you get it right
That you move your fingers into windsor knots and pull yourself together with the threads of my commitment
I want your office to say, "Nice tie" because neckties remind me of love
I want them to see you and indirectly say, "Beautiful love, you have there."
A beautiful piece of cloth sitting in between the nook and crannies of your ribs, to the right side of your heart drawing attention to the core of you
I want to make sure that you don't feel like there's a noose around your neck but rather a display of elegantly woven freedom
And when you take your necktie off after a long day of work, I want you to hold that love in your hand, hang it up and just be naked with me.

Smelled You in My Dreams

Being loved is a responsibility too many of us are not prepared for.  Sometimes I wish there was a license you could work for and acquire to prove that you were of age to be loved by someone, just like you are of age to buy liquor that gives you the same feeling anyway.  

He grew up on dirt roads and under scented rain, I wonder why he thought my skin was made of mansions and that I had eyes like corvettes.  Maybe he didn't realize that my brown skin was the dirt from the roads he ran over.  Maybe he didn't realize that the rain was just my tears overflowing.  Maybe he believed in me more than he believed in us and I wish I could have loved him better.  I was young back then.  I couldn't even form a complete sentence back then.  I knew the words but I had no purpose.  Having him was success enough.  Him loving me was enough of a finish line.

But I guess loving someone is not doing them a favor, it's making them responsible for being loved, requiring them to live to their own potential, demanding that they live each day without fear because they know that no matter what happens or doesn't happen, someone loves them.  

I dreamed him last night and do you remember the part in the song that says, "I smell you in my dreams?" That is true, by all the physics on Earth, it is true, even though it shouldn't be.  I smelled his neck as we embraced and I tiptoed just to get my arms around him.  It felt too familiar, felt too complete and I woke up wanting to drive to his house to wake him up to let him know that the dream we were both having is actually very real.  I wanted to bang on the door and walk over her shoes and shake him out of his sleep to tell him that she's cute, but she's not me and she was never chosen by God to love him like I do.  I wanted to tell her thank you for keeping him busy, for keeping him occupied, for taking care of him while I sewed the stitches of the wounds he left behind.  I wanted to show up and remind him that I'm not going anywhere, that even if he dies tomorrow, I will be in the front row of his funeral loving him till death do us part.  Because even if I was never good with my words, I was always good at loving him until the loyalty sprouted in my veins.  I will not be his victim or his ex but rather his Mary at the foot of his cross, never leaving his side even when they make a mockery of us.  Even when they tell me that his destiny is to die, is to be crucified, I will not leave him because this is the job that God gave me.  This is the seat God rested under me.  

I smelled him in my dreams last night.  I was too irresponsible to be loved back then.  Too wounded to be saved back then.  Too skeptical to believe that there was beauty in the fog.  Too ashamed to be transparent.  But I smelled him in my dreams last night and I know he keeps coming to visit me not because his bed is cold without me but rather because his heart is.

The Re-election

"For the immigrant daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag."

 I was that child and because he thought of me in a nation of millions of unheard children, I voted twice to elect Barack Obama as the President of the United States.

And November 6, 2012, the unheard children were finally heard.

Redirection

In any relationship, whether it's friendship, work, or an intimate one, respect has to be established.  We have to interact with one another with the intention of leaving the other person in a better place than when we arrived.  It feels like too many times, we are crashing into one another with rushed experiences and no intentions.  Do you buy food with no intention of eating it?  So then why do so many of us join each other's lives without first examining our true intentions. Why do so many of us feel uncomfortable with requiring other people to take responsibility for knowing what they want or don't want to add to our lives?

It's a funny realization when you take the blame for your own misfortune, when you take responsibility for your own successes and failures.  And sometimes it's discouraging when you don't even recognize yourself anymore and people still hold on to who you once were.  It is difficult when people are still calling you a name you no longer answer to.  The worst part of that is waiting for apologies from your murderers - the people that killed you, the people that robbed you, the people who left the worst scars.  When you've been a victim for so long being a survivor is strange territory.  Stop waiting for an apology for a victim that no longer exists.  

Stop praying to a god you no longer worship.  Stop following a path to a destination you no longer want to be in.  I guess all of these once frustrated me about myself.  I was too loyal to dreams that turned into nightmares, men that turned into memories and jobs that turned into unhealthy but fiscally responsible habits.  I'm not that young and not that old and even still, time has been wasted.  Stop wasting the time and the life that you were not even guaranteed.  

It's ok to change your mind.  It's not ok to work on autopilot so much that you don't use your mind.