Note to Self (Destruction)

I’m in control now.

“Sloppy drunk.”

Sounds about white

I mean right.

White girl wasted last night,

Black girl conflicted as you write

In a Black girl’s body

With curly ass hair

But when you stare in the mirror,

All you see is blonde.

Is your blackness gone?

Has it dissipated into

A white light

So bright you can’t even get lit right?

All those bottles hit, right?

Slapped you, didn’t they?

And you didn’t say one word of disapproval

Just like what happened on the night

You’re drinking to forget.

You didn’t say shit.

You just took it - like the passive white woman you are.

You try so hard to prove your blackness to everyone around you

That you forget you used to sit up in the 8th grade crying as Teardrops on my guitar played.

White horse.

Back to December.

Don’t you remember the Taylor Swift phase that eventually segued into Ed Sheeran?

Now, you’re not hearing anymore from her because she showed her true colors: white.

It’s like we can’t even get being Black

Right.

Or maybe I’m just projecting my night

Onto the whole Black Woman race.

I think we face a special kind of oppression because society’s obsession with us is so toxic they box it into braids that they’d degrade on a Shaniqua but praise on a Becky.

I know you don’t expect me to say things like this because I list my favorite artists and half of them are biracial or white.

Maybe I was just what you expected last night.

I took a 2-hour flight or a 12-hour drive

To dive into a community of people who looked like me;

Thought like me;

Loved like me.

For the first time in my life,

I wanted to be Black unconditionally.

I see the struggles we face because we classify race by arbitrary standards.

We think violence is standard if we’re Black

So the fact that I can’t fight

Becomes the first strike.

We think we can’t write our feelings

Because we’ve been dealing with such trauma we don’t wanna reveal; we don’t want to feel. Do we not want to heal?

The fact that I’m still talking about something that happened almost a year ago

Is the second strike.

They used to say I talked like I was white

So I made my speech more black-ified

And they classified me as a try hard.

3 strikes you’re out.

There goes my Black card,

But if you think hard

It was the 3 strikes policy that disproportionately

Affected the colored folk.

I’m not mainstream woke.

I didn’t vote for Hillary,

Nor did I vote for Trump.

I saw them both as white hands that would send us into slumps.

Hillary apologized, but did we really want someone who also apologized for her husband’s abuse to that young girl

As our leader of the free world?

I’m not saying she would have hurled us into WW3

Like we

Expect 45 to;

I’m just saying I feel lied to

And confused.

It’s like even when we try to avoid the L, we still lose.

Last night, I finally did choose to speak now.

I became Molina and Marvin as I was carving the portrait of that night.

It helps to write but sometimes I feel like it’s too much structure.

Speaking ruptures the fourth wall and brings the audience in.

I told them the story of my old friend,

The one I used to hold hands with freshman year.

I told them because I had burst into tears and they thought it was became I regretted going past my limit.

It took me a minute,

But I finally let it out.

I finally talked about April 18th, 2017.

I used the brushes on my face to paint the scene.

He wasn’t an anonymous fiend hiding in the bushes.

He was an old friend

Who was pushing boundaries.

The walls came down as he had sex without my permission - not a yes or no.

My friends

My family

Did not know

How to understand that,

So I planted that green into the soil -

Weed growing in my brown soul.

I know I must sound so sensitive,

But it’s a sensitive matter.

Alcohol was the next ingredient,

Red wine mixing with the weed to make for a gradient image

Of destruction and desolation.

I’m in control now.

I rule this nation - this brown temple.

Your brown temple throbbed,

Your brown body ached

Because you could not control

Your alcohol intake.

I was in charge.

I wanted to see how far I could push

Then you pushed me out of your home.

You’re so accident prone you don’t even remember all the places we fought, marked by an orangish substance more commonly known as barf.

You scarfed past your limit,

Thinking yourself J Easy - no limit you’re a fucking soldier.

It’s the 2nd day this week that he’s coming over.

You’re not over that night

And I’m what you like to use to try to forget.

It used to be blackened shits -

Now the stool holds the night’s stresses.

You don’t think you deserve nice dresses

Or banquets.

J Easy cause you’re the feast.

You’re not Belle to tame a beast.

You’re not the least bit better.

At least get better

Or I will kill you.

That’s a promise.

Remember when you said you only wanted to live until 22?

Are you trying to make that prophecy come true?

This drinking is not you,

Nor is the smoking or casual sex.

You’re hurting because you think you let him rape you.

You keep running from that pain.

Until you train your mind to be stronger,

They will run a train longer than denial you resort to.

Come home, Jay.

It’s okay.

I don’t say this enough, but you are a diamond in the rough.

You are enough.

I love you for the stuff you hate about yourself.

I too love your passion that drives you to stock books on your shelf

I love your visions of self and your crooked tooth.

I love that you’re unafraid to open up to me about your youth and how you felt loose, so now you use leaves to run from that.

I love you despite the fact you don’t think you love yourself; you do.

Don’t you get it?

I am you.