if we are worth anything later we are worth something now
(2021) #NationalPoetryMonth
I wrote this poem about the time I went to Afropunk in 2017 and it changed my life
i once saw solange sing to all the niggas in the whole wide world - aka a bunch of weirdos who looked like me - and i belonged. or maybe i didn’t and it didn’t matter maybe that’s what mattered. i’m not sure there’s a difference. i’m not sure i care. except maybe all i care about is difference: finding it, making it home, nurturing it, a proud family of exceptionality. do y’all believe in magic? in alchemy? if i could, i would take it all in; all the traumatic history of our growing pains, the wear of our homegoing and with it i’d turn my skin to iron and my hair to straw, i’d take the work and hold it in me to keep us safe. an effigy - a monument to the best version of ourselves the self that refuses to waver at the crimson red glare of our insecurities they say overcast is the best lighting, so under the oppressive swelter of this mortal existence, we must be the truth; the soft cloud revealing imperfection while beckoning beauty - like the way chocolate melts in heat, as if to remind us that we can still be craved if we are misshapen, that we still have allure when we cannot be had. in a world that rewards mediocrity we must have the audacity to see ourselves as valuable. each and every one of us must labor for self love because when everybody’s special… everyone will be.