No One Will Remember

No one will remember our hands.

The constellations they sketch in the sand.

We, deities of bleeding heartbeats.

We, epileptics of neon skies---

No one will remember our deaths,

How breath turned to silence and silence to breath.

This golden corpse decaying into something,

A steaming plate of fufu awaiting after the grave.

No one will remember our lives,

Black women reduced to cookie-cutter wives,

Existence limited to a trip to the tombstone,

This name tilting this axis, this absence.

No one will remember our minds,

The worlds black creators spin in colors too sharp,

Visions that soared beyond their reach,

A hollow in the place that forgets too soon.

Because no one will remember who we are,

The white men who will send us to the stars,

Our truth no more than dust in a cold room,

A life reduced to a whisper, a line,

And everyone moves on, as they always do.