i have always been a fighter.

not the "squae up, meet me afterschool" type of fight.

i'm talking about the boy in my class just called me the "n word,"

so "i spend the remainder of my mornings apologizing to my skin" type of fight -

i talk too white, but i'm too black to be smart.

"sorry, let me dial down my blackness for your comfort" type of fight.

"the nonstop game of tag, yet the bulet always wins" type of fight.

that "attempt to shake myself free of shackles that label me nobody" type of fight.

 

brown bodies are collecting like dust on the shelf in the library of black genocide.

blue uniformed, silver badged, squad car gifted nazis

run frenzied with a hunger in their eyes

to kill every brown king, every brown queen walking.

their black-faced bullets can't bear to be spared for anyone else -

just the innocent ones that are annihilated in the most christlike way possible -

his mama's tears raining in the background,

fearful bystanders witnessing this horror,

his hands raie, demanding:

"my god, my god, why have you forsaken me?"

 

i bet you've never had the memory of a slave ship wading over Alantic waters,

sailing through your mind to the Jim Crow north and the white sheet south.

i'm fearing 2017 is the new 1954.

i fear my son will be the next emmett till story.

i fear my 19th amendment will get buried under authority's foot.

i fear my daughter will always think a bullet is chasing her home.

 

isn't it something -

how they promise to make america great again?

but i don't recall when it ever was.

 

isn't it something -

how the word "murderer" turns into"hero" on FOX news?

how their gun gets glorified while her son gets buried?

how men of my own kind shame me for my skin and compare me to other races,

like me, his mama, and his sisters don't share the same faces?

 

call me song.

my body weaves rhythm patterns of blue and chants lullabies of my being.

i dance my creation and make ballads of my grandmother's wisdom.

my walk is an anthem for every ear.

 

call me light

because heaven has always lived in me.

i always gleam when darkness comes.

 

call me queen

matter of fact, crown me queen.

for i am nothing less than that,

and beyond more than any label they try to place on me.