no more slave movies

circa 2020

didn’t they know erasing our history would only bring about the most beautiful imaginations? 

little eyes drank in the sights. liquorstorebodegachickenspot. beautiful as any rennaissance painting. leaning on the windowsill, elbows going numb. little black people on little streets with stories invented, stored in little brain. dare to put your hands on the fire escape, escape the belt. little ears are caressed by symphonies of profanities, encouragements that sound like secrets of the earth. little nostrils full of kools smoke. little girl overkissed sent to the other room pouting, big mouths laugh and laugh and laugh.

little queen of the discount store. little queen of crayon lipstick, clip on hoops. queen of boo-boos.

black boy listens to me whine about being ugly and still calls me queen. he laughs too, says imagine? if we were back home, you would be the standard. royalty. the irony doesn’t touch me. i have not imagined, and i am scared i cannot. under him i cannot be weak, even when he invites it. i fear victimhood and together we wear the badge of shame with a pride unknown.

the fear of victimhood is to deny the breath that tickles the nape of your neck.

the fear of victimhood is the shame that lines our faces.  it is the uncomfortable laugh that is really a scream. it is the exhaustion we welcome, if only we are seen, if only we can kill the shame that presses our lips together so tightly we can feel the impression of teeth, the shame is bloodless, and warm. our fear of victimhood is the shame that throws a punch. the weeping satisfaction of a split knuckle, the voice that pierces through bone. the mind that cannot tolerate the self. drives the hands that come to exploit their own, fresh, and lineless.

the fear of victimhood is a dance in delusion. black boy knows more about Africa than anyone i’ve ever met. forged in the same southern dirt: we push against and are drawn to. black boy blocks me when he feels too vulnerable: we are one in the same.

“if things had been different,

if we were not weak,

we would have had the chance,

to destroy everything, too.”

i lay claim to this pain, this joy, this ache, this orgasm, this illness, this antidote.

i lay under the dominican boy. taino, he likes to be called. i have walked through the fire he lights in me, another life: a blaze of glory over the trail of tears. when he says nigga, i search the black of his eyes and cannot think of where to look.

they say my great-grandmother’s grandfather was black as night, with hair that flowed down to his ass. an “indian”. i like to imagine him, unbounded, unshackling hands with skin so like his, but so unlike his, and i like to think he saw himself in her. i think of hands reaching across each other in the midst of flames, ignited by a fury that could not be put out.

taino, he likes to be called. my partner in indigenity but i cannot imagine we met before. my ancestor forced from his land through the flame, his wife forced to ascend through the flame, scorched by the will to live. perhaps by the same fire that forged the shackles of the african woman he met in the burning void of genocide, the fire seeking out more land.

his last name bleeds. Blanco. conqueror and conquest. i cannot help but think: his own blood stains his own hands. black and brown and white vying for dominance within him. a melting pot of brutality. and it makes me wonder: how does it feel to be the host of your own sickness? 

nigga, he likes to say. i imagine each letter oozing down his throat like cough medicine. maybe the way the sound of him saying nigga jumps on every one of my nerves soothes each one of his.

i cling to fanciful thoughts, memories. i connect the dots, lovingly, painstakingly.

whiteboy calls it nostalgia. the little eyes full of fullhousesavedbythebellgeneralhospital grace the sight of him in awe while big eyes dress him in distain. big eyes wonders if she’s betrayed us all. nostalgia. just like ‘em to strip the magic strip the life strip the humanity from every moment, every life. i cannot love him without sickness, and i am afraid it is seeping into me. i lay under him while stomach twists and turns. 

yet i loved him still, engulfed by it like a sheet of snow, resisting with the force of a blinding storm.

big eyes search for the more. big eyes search for the why.

this shame is not mine, although i inherit it, i pray i will not pass it down. i imagine i won’t.

blessed are the weathered hands that brought me up. blessed are the baby hairs carefully molded against heartbroken head, betrayal as holy as the blood that flows through me. blessed are the butterscotch kisses i wiped off sticky cheeks, blessed are auntie’s tithes to the church of baby girl, pressed into the palm of your hand when nobody looks.

we are the daughters of the dust. baked into the crust of the earth we are the source and product we are no more and no less than we have produced. i watch us dance in blood red mud. steeped in earth-old lineage. sometimes i see us dance. sharpened by the mind’s eye i rest on the likes of morrison and hurston to help me see my people again. i scurge the pages to see, i hold on to the hope that maybe i’m there. but i can imagine.

blessed are the traumas we have collected. bits and pieces of horror that let you know we are protected and defiled, we were always here though some of us are lost, and we will always be here when there is nothing less. blessed are the wounds i nurse, old and new, blessed is the mind that will release them, blessed is the host to recieve the bounty of all the beauty we’ve been accumulating in the face of unimaginable ugly.

didn’t they knew erasing our history would only bring about the most beautiful imaginations?