When I Think About You in response to Maya Angelou's "When I Think About Myself"

When I think about you

  Brown cracked skin baked in the sun

Eyes that have seen dreams

  not allowed to live

Pockets full of dirt

  Harvests you will never taste

Homes you built that you

  May never own

The invisible labor that sits at

  The abundant table

You hope of a better future

  to be met with masked men

They drag your bodies into cages

  torn from babes’ arms

The stories they tell sound like impossibilities

  In the “melting pot” that has spilled

Onto rotting ground

When I think about us

our language

  entangled into a single tongue

Flinches at the earth’s bitterness

  There is no laughter here