no one is going to look at you, broken and shattered
and think -
damn, you are beautiful.
no one is going to come pick up your broken pieces off the floor and
assemble them into a beautiful whole.
hell,
you won’t even look at yourself and think -
I made broken look beautiful.
you know why?
because all those writers lied to you.
yes,
all those with their poems of scraped knuckles and
blood dripping down chins,
pomegranate songs and loves that ripped through you like
hurricanes.
liars.
so you and i,
we are going to make a plan.
you are not going to romanticize days when your brain tells you to smash that mirror,
you are not going to romanticize the lover who doesn’t understand you
but still writes about you.
here is what you are going to romanticize instead:
you are going to romanticize the first day of spring,
its gentle hands all over your body,
lifting you up until you are as light as a feather.
you are going to romanticize the tea and honey kind of love,
no hurricanes,
but sunshine that builds you up from within,
that helps you make it through the worst days.
you are going to romanticize gentle hands of a friend
in yours,
telling you that it is going to be okay.
because it is.
and don’t trust poets,
we’re no good,
we love pretending that our jagged edges tantamount to a beautiful disaster, but in reality -
there ain’t nothing beautiful about shaky hands holding a cigarette and
empty eyes staring at the cracks in the walls.
you know what is beautiful, instead?
the days when you can look at yourself in the mirror and smile,
scars and all.
music that makes your soul flow like a river,
books that offer comfort,
families flocking together like overgrown birds to keep you safe and warm,
friends that give you strength when you can find none,
lovers who make you laugh through tears.
baby,
from now on
you are going to romanticize healing;
honey dripping down your fingertips,
August nights that stick to your skin,
the day you find your purpose,
long car rides and singing so loud that no one can shut you up now.
A Single Book Can Alter The Strongest Of Foundations
Installation artist Jorge Mendez Blakecreates a powerful brick sculpture titled “The Castle”. The intimidating wall, formidable and erect, loses its symmetry and forms a rift at the point where a book it inserted at its root. Keep reading
Poet
Taylor Steele captures the problem with appropriating Black slang.
In her poem “AAVE” (which stands for African-American Vernacular English) Taylor Steele explains why appropriation of Black slang is the worst. African-American culture is being popularized on a daily basis and while Black people are judged and mistreated for using something they came up with ages ago, White people come off as cool and original when they use it.
Here’s to the carefree black girls who make mistakes. To the girls who drown their depression with one too many shots and throw up at their ex’s feet, the girls who reblog natural hair but tug at their 4c roots, wishing it were long, straight, good.
Here’s to the girls who might like girls and who tell other girls that ‘It gets better!’— Meanwhile they’re healing the bruises of their mothers’ ‘God can change you!’
Here’s to the girls who have stopped going to church but not stopped looking for God: to the girls who lie awake panicking that they’re going to hell.
Here’s to the girls who can’t bring themselves to watch Sandra Bland, who’ve stopped reblogging Black Lives Matter because they’ve gone numb. Here’s to the girls who clench their fists when white people walk by and the girls who secretly wonder if black girls deserve it.
Here’s to the girls whose mothers have given them containers of sticky yellow skin bleach. Here’s to the girls who use it ‘only to clear acne scars’ but who relish in the fact that their new skin glows in the darkness.
Here’s to the girls whose acne scars form angry red constellations, the girls who sleep in makeup and the girls too afraid to wear short sleeves; no one told you that those scars can reach the elbow.
Here’s to the girls who wish they were boys but never want to be men, and the girls who squeeze their legs together whenever a man walks by. Here’s to girls who flinch in the mirror.
Here’s to the girls who are so damn tired. Here’s to the girls who are so damn manic.
Here’s to the girls who are so damn fat and so damn skinny on the same day.
Here’s to the girls who can’t go on but go on, who preach forgiveness but can’t forgive themselves.
Here’s to the carefree black girls whose freedom comes at a price. Here’s to the carefree black girls who never feel carefree.
