Waxing poetic on thoughts, theory & the times
Last night I saw you,
All of you,
Lighting up
As if I had never seen such a sight before,
This evening, you are silent in sight,
But I remember your glow,
And for that I am grateful
To have seen such a show;
Grateful for this luminescent gift.
Brown,
A color often not given much love,
It’s a color often only liked by association,
I wonder
What is it about the color of wood, earth and chocolate,
That we avoid,
Black is beautiful,
And brown a twist
A darkened orange
Often left out of the mix,
My aunt once marveled about my skin,
As “brown and lovely”
I rebuked
Knee jerked,
internalized oppression
Creeping in,
Not letting me see brown as Beauty,
On me
Fast forward,
Black Lives Mattered,
And layers of concealer were peeled back,
To see hate self inflicted on me,
And others like me,
With little deaths,
Until depleted self-esteem
Threatened and began feeding on worth,
A self-love kick flipped my switch,
Rewound, and unwound
The mental emotional noose I was putting on daily for being in a vessel,
Beautiful,
But with “eyes” made blind to see,
Gazing mahogany to caramel through a distorted gaze,
In snapping out of it,
In waking up
I’m confident in identifying shades of me;
I am brown
and lovely.
I deserve
More than I know yet,
I deserve
Because hell I’m worth it,
I deserve
Because I know who I am,
And loving her makes me realize
I can’t expect love, respect and affection from another,
If I can’t expect that from myself,
for myself,
And so I’ll confess it here:
“I love me”;
I am intelligent,
I am wise
I am beautiful,
I am kind,
I am good
I am awe-inspiring
I am all this and more,
And yes, I am god-damn deserving.
As a child
Kids tauntingly called me,
for reasons I could not see,
“Tina Turner”.
I balked at the comparison
That I could not understand
Because
That
Was not my name.
I scoffed
Because I was just a child,
And not, however old the singer was then;
I hated it.
I hated it because
I couldn’t understand
What being black and beautiful
Even as a child meant
And yes, often
It meant gazes of judgment from foreign eyes
About who and what I was
It mean negative perceptions
But it also meant the good.
And now I appreciate my mother’s response
That the tears of this child could not fathom then.
“They called me Tina Turner, again”
“Yes”,
And I was reminded that I had just been
awarded,
an unintentional compliment;
Of comparison to one of the
Greatest of all time:
The astonishing gorgeous,
Talented,
Resilient,
Powerhouse
Who is
Tina Turner.
“Why not be proud?”
I miss walking through the gardens,
I took for granted all the fragile beauty that laid right within my step,
I miss the sight of blossoms full in springtime,
Displaying and reminding of my own fertility,
I miss the smell of fresh aromatic flowers,
eagerly hinting to be held gently and brought closer,
I miss the closeness to flora that made me feel ethereal, beautiful,
Otherworldly as I walked through this domain of sensual beauty.
He sees the difference,
Between us,
In our views,
In our tastes,
In our skin,
And he celebrates
Out loud,
Letting it slip off his tongue,
But I was taught we are all the same,
But I knew we were different,
But I just saw beauty in it,
How I envy his missing social mores,
That allow him to verbalize
What I was reared to keep tucked under tongue,
I want to learn,
To be like him,
To identify the differences and make them known,
For their existence is a secret,
We all pretend not to know,
Free my eyes to see,
Free my voice to speak this truth
When it need be,
For as I know,
In this difference,
Is human beauty
She of Letters 