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.