NETI NETi
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When my mother still braided my “good hair”
I thought I was too white for double dutch So I doubled down on irreverence And Fresh Prince of Bel Air But by 18 I knew I had always been too gay To make a game of dodging the whipping figure 8s Hopeless at pat-a-cake Too afraid my Miss Mary Mack Mack Mack would betray my blackness I mastered in tough love and Phd’ in bottle up Until I cried lightning Till I thick skinned my thick skin Learned how to sound and to who? Or is it whom? Learned to read every room and count the exits At home I dropped syllables and vowels At school I dropped soliloquies and lexis Learned when to quote Dickinson or Du Bois Socrates or Biggie Biggie Biggie can’t you see I can be noble or savage, straight or gay I have played dead but mostly I have played alive Fighting and flighting, freezing and fawning Surviving daily hunger games It’s a peculiar sensation this triple consciousness This woman, black, gay box ticking Detonating on a long fuse of dreams deferred I have been all your somethings On my way to no thing On my way to nothing I am most at home in sun salutations Most mySelf chanting soham and oms But these days I question if I’m poaching as I practice Replacing Jesuses with Lakshmis And Amens for Namastes, exactly Who do I ask for access when I knock from the inside? My life always seemed too hardknock for belief My heart always too tongue-tied for connection But when I bring my palms together Eyes closed thumbs restin’ against chest Those are the only times I ever prayed and meant it |