Connections seem to slip
through my hands.
And I feel myself disappearing
with every splish-splosh.

I feel paper thin,
Like if I'm put against light
I'm see through.
I feel like smoke,
As though I could evaporate with a puff of air.
I feel temporary,
As though my presence is remembered
In fits and spurts- never constant.
Have you ever been in a room
Full of people,
But felt completely and utterly alone?

White body kills Black body
But no body saw a thing.
Every body has an opinion
But no body has the truth.
White body thought that it could
Beat the blackness out of Black body
But Black body stayed black.
Black body cried out,
"Some body! Please! Help!
This violates ****** rights!"
But still, no body heard a thing.
White body has weapons
It inherited from its ancestors:
            Police
            White Privilege
            Justice System
            Freedom
            Hypocrisy
            Lies­
            Gun.
Black body had a weapon too:
           None
White body stays free, remorseless
While Black body lies in the ground.
White body's name is America.
Black body's name was Black Body.

Smile!
It's not so bad!*
Relations today are better than they were fifty years ago!
That's not a consolation because
**Our existence has always been an unfortunate one.

The beauty about being black
Is that I have tears and scars and
anxiety and violations and incarcerations
and fear and joy and love and
music and resilience and hope
and triumph and defeat and
defiance and perseverance and
intelligence and diligence and
adaptability and understanding
All woven through my being, my skin
My essence
That could not be stripped away
In 400 years.
I am a living embodiment of all
these emotions
Passed down from my ancestors
to my grandparents to my parents to
Me.
Black people cannot be brought down
Because we are the backbone of a nation.
We are the lifeblood of its people.
We possess a magic that no other people
Can attain because we attained it
Through suffering and more suffering
And more suffering after that when we
thought we couldn't possibly suffer any
longer.
We survive and will continue to survive
Because that is our creed, our way of life
We possess a rare entity
Unattainable to anyone else
It's strictly ours.
It's one of the few things we have been
able to preserve-
Magic.

My little brother will do certain things
In public
That I have to stop him from doing.
I can't explain to him why he can't
Or why it's wrong
Because I don't even know the reasons
Myself.
He's so used to people judging him
For his "invisible" condition
That he doesn't know that his visible one
Is being
Black.
His "invisible condition is called
"Autism."
He and I share that same visible condition
But my "invisible" one-
It's called, "Being conditioned to know
That my condition is being
Black."

It's not until recently
That I realize
How hard it's always been for you.
The moments I had taken for granted
Seem like fiction in my own made up fantasy,
But I know what it feels like.
You have always been yearning for a glimpse,
A taste, a sight
Of friendship.
It's not until now,
When I'm alone and friendless,
That I see how hard it must have always been for you.
I'm sorry for taking your pain for granted,
For never truly understanding
Until now.
*I'm so, so sorry.