Vision

My Tumblr is a gallery of Carefree Black Girls My dashboard swimming with women Wearing afros and flowered halos Crowned with graduation caps & headwraps These were the picture perfect black girls I wanted to become But I realized they were more of an aspiration than a representation They shared my skin, but not my story And I didn't have the privilege of being a part of theirs I was trying my hardest to mimic their model To undo parts of me that weren’t pretty enough to be palatable I stopped wearing weaves Because they weren’t afrocentric enough This was both my first act of defiance and conformity I spent half a check on Shea Moisture   When I didn't have enough to buy lunch The carefree black girl archetype felt like a V.I.P club Even the commonality of our oppressions couldn't get me in The constructs they looked so happy living without, Were the same ones I was still shackled to I wasn't middle class black girl enough I imagined their smiles tracing back to condos and beach houses Where their 3C curls could blow freely in wind But I couldn't look careless while surviving in the hood There was no one to admire this impoverishment There were never photos of girls that looked like me, The ones with forty bottles and blunts The mamas with babies hanging from their breasts The aunties braiding on front steps And my food stamps weren't romanticized or revolutionary I couldn’t afford that portrayal of freedom This hood girl too ratchet, Too stereotype my poverty a cliche I don’t have the luxury of leaving behind I'm too ghetto, too much of what black girls don’t want to be and I can’t find joy in being a starving artist When I know the pain of actually starving I’m sorry there ain't nothing photogenic about how dirty I have to hustle here Never a celebration for the single black moms who have to sell rock to feed their kids or the older sisters who use bloody knuckles on street corners to protect their siblings These roles were played too many times for an applause *(u)I am the black girl they cropped out of the picture The one who is too typecast Too much of something stale and exhausted I am the idea of blackness they ran away from The rejected residue of the angry black woman But I have the right to my frown I don’t wish that my anger be destroyed as means of acceptance I endure erasure to save my people from stigma But now, when tumblr teases me with a cracked mirror And tries to convince my blackness that it has to be careful carrying a girl like me I remind myself That my Ratchet is Righteous I am one of a million ways to be a black girl And I’m allowed to coexist with the rest of them I'm allowed to love my Afro and kinks Then wear a 22 inch Malaysian weave the next day I can be Badu and Cardi B all at once I can blast trap music like gospel Black women are never one dimensional We can be hoe and housewife Artist and hoodrat Nerd and trap queen   Angry and carefree At the same damn time Being a black girl Is thriving everywhere no one else wants you to be It's realizing the complexity of our womanhood can’t be undermined It's being frontline in battle and still slaying the war paint, It’s writing yourself back into existence, Despite our differences, our strength and beauty are universal Accept me the way I am Because all black girls are worth the frame

Be careful falling in love with someone in transition. Your presence may not be required once they become who they envision.

"Boys are stupid. I don't play dumb to fit in. I play dumb so they can understand me."

People saying Beyonce got more criticism than Kendrick because she’s a woman are 100% correct