Chewings of a Middle Passage

Our heavenly skin,

kissed by the sun,

sloughs back into the dirt

we came

from, as it is

rubbed raw

cleaned of our spirit,

Just to become more like them.

We became the welders of our own destruction,

when we were taught to

hate ourselves, and to hate and fight each other

When thoughts of loving ourselves or each other

Becomes sin or something to laugh about.

When putting my trust in “white oppressor” seems

More reasonable, and prosperous

Than to lay with another “brother”

(And who is prosperity for anyway?)

And that brother is willing to forfeit parts of himself,

And all of what came before him,

Just for the chance to lay with a porcelain princess

That can show him love, views of the world,

With a lens on life never sullied by true pain

Of the ancestors and millenia of tears

His skin will forever retain as he forgets.

We spend centuries released from captivity just to

Fit ourselves into molds of white glory and expectation,

They always tell us what to do and how to be successful,

It's never enough to just be.

This feat to settle into their image

Will never be attainable to us, (nor should it be)

Which is why they shoot us yet still call us free.

Our ancestors were warriors

willing to jump into the Atlantic, willing

to die free before ever becoming a slave.

and for the ones who stayed,

The Atlantic became a sea of tears,

of precious souls unknown.

They sold our mothers, fathers,

sisters, brothers, our children

straight from the womb.

And to survive, we were forced

to find solace and

peace through our oppressors

the ones that would remain

in the absence of our loved ones

as they perish in the sea

of tears and resilience

Necessary to keep our kind afloat

Just until we reach the promised land

A “promised” land where to be me, and to be free

can be true,

Where we could allow ourselves to love truly,

In a society

that truly accepts

Our skins hue.

To love our people meant lives

tied to pain more unbearable than the chains.

Our love fueled the plows

the milk of mothers for white mouths,

the blood of our fathers fed the soil that feeds this country

And what is left for that child left

To scramble for scraps of love,

veiled behind layers of scars she

Has yet to see the blows. Or from who they came

From.

In an attempt to survive we forsake our love

for each other.

we scramble aimlessly with gaping holes of love,

And the only way to fill, includes our destruction.

We can account for damages if we don’t know

Whats been lost.

VII.

I lose myself in love with

the descendents of white oppressors

And their way of life

that still oppresses me,

So they can teach me love,

And give me more worth than

Society could give to me.

With hope that they could love,

my hair, me, and my intellect

In ways that didn’t come from

generations of heavy hands,

Of family members who

couldn’t love me without words

That left me with bruises,

And maybe they meant to turn me into stone

Because maybe then I could survive. But

I was too soft, Just Jasmine flower petals

My essence bleeds within your hands,

To “soft” to see that those stone words,

Were to protect me from the greatest

Monsters of them all.

And facing the grim truth of a land infested with hate

And incinerating in injustice

I come back to those heavy hands meant to prepare me,

And I shower them with kisses,

And try to rebreath light and love into those tired hands,

And show them that it is okay to open up your heart

I pry the hate they have accepted onto themselves.

And rid them from the false identities

they could never fulfil, and I remind them

“ we are just to grand”

And despite the grind that sometimes

it's okay to just be.

To love yourself was to be rogue,

our bodies and minds only prized by the utility,

And the love of my oppressors was

for the sake of monetary gain,

the knowledge we would provide

and the success of our efforts

they would claim.

Their love meant to frame,

or refrain from us, love meant to maim,

love so divine

they built a book, a religion,

destroyed bloodlines.

We were forsaken,

forever forged in our prime,

as they pale in comparison,

If this love is so divine,

what good is it being offered

from the loins of our oppressors?

the descendants of such unfit to love me,

as long as we see in two worlds,

where appreciation and fusion is not enough,

to reveal and reclaim the parts of myself

that will remain lost and hidden

in racial oblivion.