She is a noose still soiled with rotting chips of bloody skin
She is the floor freshly mopped for the wrong man to stand on
She is a maze a lion’s lair and a labyrinth
She is the prize in the center of the maze
She is an expensive shirt that matches nothing in your closet
We do not call it black love
Our love has no need of labels
I am the night sky earth’s blanket everywhere but nowhere
I am convinced that my blackness has always been a preexisting condition
I am a thrift store sofa
I am stained
I am used
I am someone’s trash
Black girl magic is a misnomer
There is too much Sandra Bland-ness in her brilliant blue-blackness for it to be magic
Her kisses do not turn me into a prince
Or
A citizen
Her love does not add the other 2/5s needed to make me a man
All the men in this land are old white and do not appreciate Kendrick
I do not want to be these men
Black girl magic is the honey that makes black excellence easier to swallow
Black boy joy is a misnomer
To be boy is a luxury we cannot afford
It is a Greek myth like Heracles or the American Dream
No
Black boys are born running like gazelles
We are hunted for our bodies
I wonder who has made room for me on their mantle?
In which trophy case will you find Trayvon?
We still use Emmett Till as a ghost story to train our sons
We tell them
“She will never love you like on of us”
“She will never be one of us”
“She need only whisper the word rape with the strength it takes to blow the candles off of a birthday cake
And they
Will throw you a lynch party
The only magic is making love out of black fear
Carrying your black like stubborn belly fat and no matter how much you diet
Ain’t no coming back from that
Promise me you will never call it magic again
You are a spirit you have a body
You’re not inferior to anybody
Don’t let them tell you that double-dutch is not a tradition
Those swinging ropes like lines of descent cutting through air and airborne oppressions
Those sneakers on wires symbolize the heights to which we’re called to climb before we get caught by crime
Tradition
My woman girls never chanted over cauldrons
They made us a life from scratch
Adding elements periodically to a pot
Mixed sweat with flour
Withstood summer and oven heat
Not one body starved
There was no magic or metaphors
I do not not belittle my queens by calling them girls
I’ve seen black women battle
Breathless as they bathe and dress babies in the sink
I never understood how they made money out of mindfulness
How fish dinners turn into fish sandwiches
Turn into feeding 5,000
Grandma inherited Jesus’ hands
How she heal faces with spit and thumb?
How you multiply gum and peppermint in purse?
How you believe me?
Tradition
We beat our women
Tradition
We beat them with fists and words and indifference
We beat them because they will never be ours
Their bodies belong to European standards of beauty
Their minds belong to Neo-American ideals of feminism
We don’t say we love them
Because when a man says he loves you
It means he will support you
Provide for you
And feel responsible for you
So those 3 words are shackled captives in the gilded cage of our fragile masculinity
We are pawns of reality
Ignorant of truth
Us
The other
The black
The muslim
We
The different
The latino
The poor
We all of us have more in common with bears than american citizens
We know how it feels to be hunted for our bodies
For our bodies to be gutted of everything that fills our bodies with pride
To be stuffed
We have become rugs
We lie still
Quiet
Only noticed when stepped on
Mouths open because of the trauma
Or hunger
But we have our voice
A gift from God
