Dear Culture

I adore you,

Your lively dancing and curly hair

Your strong persona that emerges from melanin skin, breaking through every obstacle life throws

I applaud you, culture

I admire you, culture

And I am sorry that I do not fit with you, culture

Your powerful aura is my filter

Grasping, choking, stealing the best parts of me to put on a pedestal and show the world

But you won't take the worst of me

The overwhelming sadness, the need to escape my seclusive being

Your liveliness is my leash

A pseudo-freedom, only to tighten every time I try to be free

And now I’m clawing at my throat, begging for air

But you don’t hear me

No

You won’t hear me

The worst of me doesn’t exist to you but it exists to me

It’s the only thing I have that is mine and I cling to it

I cling to the worst of me

Talking myself out of things that will inevitably make me go insane

Soaking my pillow in salty water because I can not flow free

To you, my pain is unjustifiable, a paragon of thin skin

But you have no idea the hold of the demons inside of me

Begging to be free but all I need is for you to

HEAR ME

But how can you hear me when sometimes you can’t even hear yourself