We are Colored Girls and have not been able to lay in peace since he left us in pieces.

He left like he was a six year old boy who had become frustrated because he couldn’t find the missing puzzle piece.

So he destroyed everything that he had worked hard and walked away like we never existed.

He didn’t answer the phone when we called, he never came back for his favorite t-shirt and he forgot to tell us sorry.

He left us in ruins in our own home where he had promised to treat us like a queen.

He said that we could trust him and now he has left.

And now we are angry with god, we asked for him to send us a man who we could learn from and grow with.

But we women sometimes forget that God will send someone who will leave us in pieces.

Just so we can appreciate when someone new comes along who is willing to help piece us back together.

So that we may lay in bed at peace with ourselves.

She is a Colored Girl who has gotten caught up in the hand me downs that life has given her.

She has been greeted with sorry after sorry.

Apology after Apology.

And quite frankly she has become fed up with waiting for someone to come save her.

For a man to love her enough, to recognize that this “Love Thing” is no cake walk, it is everything that mama has warned you about.

And everything that words, emotions, music, poems, and movies try to capture about LOVE.

So No, she does not need any more hand me down love stories that don’t fit her properly.

Because her love is like a Thursday night at the lakefront and the sun setting by the water as her shadow slowly disappears.

And she is left standing there and doesn’t even realize it has left her.

Her love is too independent to wear other people’s hand me down love stories.

I am a Colored girl who has lost her way in Big mama’s yard on laundry day.

With the white linen blowing in the wind and she is calling my name… “Nina, Nina c’mon now.”

But I can’t seem to find her I got caught in life’s thrills.

Because I wanted to know what it felt like to wander and explore everything that big mama talked about when she talked to her sister on the telephone.

And I wanted to know what independence felt like so I left home and stepped onto a campus of insecurities, lust, loneliness and excitement.

Because I have tasted the forbidden fruit, I have been left on my bedroom floor balled up with my back against the window, I have been drunken with lust and have called out to God when he seemed to be a little too far away.

But I have found out what Alice Walker meant when we are in search of our Mother’s garden.

I know why Maya Angelou knows why the caged bird sings.

I understand why Sonia Sanchez gather’s up each sound you left behind and stretch them on our bed. Each night I breathe you and become high.

 And I have calculated why my hips swing the way they do, and why my cheeks are the first to grab your attention…

There is honesty in my smile, confidence in my stride and a true essence of what form beauty may come in.

And I think I may have figured out why colored girls do the things that they do…

Because we are in search of finding ourselves in the midst of, Life’s love stories, heart aches, comedy sketches, dramas and horror stories of what we think love will look like when we meet him.