Poetry

Honesty can be a cool breeze, or the blade of a knife cutting into your skin.

It can lift you up or it can pull you down.

Honesty is usually meant in the best of intentions.

But sometimes it still hurts.

Things I Know About You: 

Take the risks that scare you

Not because

There is no risk

But because 

You may shrink into yourself

If you don’t grow yourself.

I can not promise

That I am the best place

To be

I do not know why I yearn.

Why I sing like a mourning dove on a wire,

crying softly for her lover to come.

Why i droop like the willow,

her leaves hanging down by the pond,

weeping for something unknown.

"An older, African American leader that I respected highly told me I had to make a choice: be a part of the world of the lynchers or join the Other America"

-Anne Braden

Every day, a voice sings to me.

But she is not gentle or sweet 

She screams in agony and fear:

"You cannot be in here,

You cannot say those words,

cannot sing that song,

They call it America’s pastime,
a field of white lines
drawn like promises on green grass.

A bat rises
like hope in the hands of someone
taught to believe in chances.

You are standing at the mirror,
pulling at the edges of your reflection,
wondering which piece of yourself to trim away
to fit the shape of his praise.
You are tucking back the parts of your spirit that feel "too much,"

"This is America"

you told me 

when I was too young to understand

what you even meant

"This is America"

the land of the free

I always come back to

the synchrony I find in the wild 

The insignificance I feel

when the rain pours down

Giving breath to growth

The birds are all singing, differently

from one another

I learned to cry without my eyes turning red

Letting tears run down my face

Silence can be agony

I cover up my tears with a smile pasted on for all to see

But no one sees me

I put on a mask

My tears turn into snowflakes 

Cold and so complex

Freezing my skin black

For the sin of feeling sad

The cold is punishment