At the bottom of a roiling ultramarine sea I look up from the floor. My eyes sting from the salt and darkness. Adjust and then adopt the bioluminescent glow I need to navigate. "You will always be other. Alien. A mimic." It echoes and claws at my heart.
My mind.
Ringing alone in the empty vastness of saltwater. How does a mermaid trapped on land grow her sea legs?
A great yawning moan shudders through tectonic plates. A wail escapes from the pit of my chest reaching decibels not associated with me.
My skin. My curves.
She could never. She doesn't look like what is allowed to have words like opulence and ethereal beauty aimed at her.
Rage smothered in silence and poverty. Shut up in my heart and bones!
You would dare speak up? You would dare stand up and not cower when a rich pale one sibilantly hurls a complaint? Are you some sort of reborn Emitt Till?
Bow. Scrape.
Why are you still standing?
No. Not you. There's too much water in your eyes. A body taking up space and failing to command it.
You are so much a heap or raw nerves than a walking, singing, living thing. Bursting seams. Losing love. Passed aside for less voice and skill attached to the pale ones that happen to "know people".
Numb.
Spent.
Screaming behind my eyes.
Shaking from low blood sugar and adrenaline leaving me. Limbs jangling like electric lines being tested.
Is there a place for us?
Exclusion and discrimination has contaminated the soil here. It has been indoctrinated and inherited like so much of the hoarded wealth here. Generations accustomed to a certain way of living. Granting limited allowance to those just light enough to sit on the porch but never enter.
When I am up. Floating. Finally singing like an avenging angel. A pheonix. I am not just some black girl. It is cruelly brief.
My mind.
Ringing alone in the empty vastness of saltwater. How does a mermaid trapped on land grow her sea legs?
A great yawning moan shudders through tectonic plates. A wail escapes from the pit of my chest reaching decibels not associated with me.
My skin. My curves.
She could never. She doesn't look like what is allowed to have words like opulence and ethereal beauty aimed at her.
Rage smothered in silence and poverty. Shut up in my heart and bones!
You would dare speak up? You would dare stand up and not cower when a rich pale one sibilantly hurls a complaint? Are you some sort of reborn Emitt Till?
Bow. Scrape.
Why are you still standing?
No. Not you. There's too much water in your eyes. A body taking up space and failing to command it.
You are so much a heap or raw nerves than a walking, singing, living thing. Bursting seams. Losing love. Passed aside for less voice and skill attached to the pale ones that happen to "know people".
Numb.
Spent.
Screaming behind my eyes.
Shaking from low blood sugar and adrenaline leaving me. Limbs jangling like electric lines being tested.
Is there a place for us?
Exclusion and discrimination has contaminated the soil here. It has been indoctrinated and inherited like so much of the hoarded wealth here. Generations accustomed to a certain way of living. Granting limited allowance to those just light enough to sit on the porch but never enter.
When I am up. Floating. Finally singing like an avenging angel. A pheonix. I am not just some black girl. It is cruelly brief.
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