All Black Ethiopian Power Ranger

When we rediscovered what it means to be a woman;that all of our breasts do not hang the same, but all of our backs have been used as bridges at one point in time

 Our shoulders stay heavy with the world

I took your heart, wrapped it in silk fabric and let it sit in the left back pocket of my favourite jeans. 

Making sure not to sit too hard so that you did not break my seams

When you told me your arms felt too heavy we danced and shifted our feet like feathers in the wind swaying to vibrations in Ethiopia, deep Africa, east

I took you home, offered to wash off your sweat but that musk would never leave; your oils stained my pillows

I let your scent linger for as long as it needed to

You took up my space and I didn’t ask you to apologise, but that’s what you’d been waiting for

You felt small that year, smaller than the atoms God made you with

How hard I loved you that year

I remember you smiling on Sunday afternoons

I whispered prayers around your hips like your stretch marks were rosary beads

Found myself mourning because not even the power of my words, prayers, could heal the scars of your abuse

 Not even my touch could heal your broken bones from night terrors to butterflies

I’d weep

And you wrapped yourself back into that cocoon leaving me to wait and watch for metamorphosis

You had diamonds falling from your lips; you had jewels attached to your spine that I tried to massage out mistaking them for knots

That year you discovered you had jewels even in your bowl movements, everything you touched turned to sunrise

you were fire

But I made you convince your body it could walk on water

I wanted to cut you out of that cocoon, to be selfish, to be upset I had invested all of that time loving you that hard

I was Moses, you were the miracle

I spent 365 days and nights with you on my back

Rediscovering with you what it means to be female; what it means not to hate men

Reminding you that not all of their piercing eyes broke open old stitches and not all of them will tell you “you do not love yourself”

That a man the same age of Christ when he was crucified would not attempt to make a resurrection out of you; to see how low your head could bow, how wide your mouth could crucify

That you have brothers that love you

What it means to love other women, thinking not all women are like your sister

To never call home what has no welcome mat

What it means to know your language is sacred, every time you speak in your mother tongue you are calling upon your ancestors – you will never be alone

 What it means to love fearlessly and to be comfortable with reservation

That this is not the armed forces’ - we do ask and we do tell

I tried to make this process easier but I was never good at keeping things from you.

This is for the girl who spent her youth in the shower trying to scrub off the cancer, the black that wore her like a plague

This is for the girl that searched her insides for the vacuum that consumed her being until she was merely a reflection, a reminder, a shadow 

Is It Selfish To Want to Matter?

Watch my full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1cwictFnPo&feature=gp-n-y&google_comment_id=z12vivy5bnzbjzg1q23ag3bgktnmifcfm

“The Breakfast for Children Program B represents the best and most influential activity going for the BPP and, as such, is potentially the greatest threat to efforts by authorities B to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.”

Desperate, hungry people are more likely, in their desperation and hunger, to lash out at those closest to themselves rather than the more distant, often unseen causes of their misery. 

I’m currently reading this book called, 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof by J.A. Rogers. I’m learning some interesting facts about black history that I haven’t known before, including this little tea on white women’s role in the transatlantic slave trade:

In the 1850s, Mrs. Leybonn, an Englishwoman, was “Queen of the Slave traders,” at Rio Pongo, one of the principal slave posts in West Africa. She had a fort armed with cannon and armed with 300 devoted blacks. She had three mulatto children by a Negro, a boy, and two girls.One of the latter married a slave-trader, and the other, a British Consul.