breathing, light, decay.
I am still alive.
Here in Philadelphia, the sky sprays gunshots like the Fourth of July firecracker pop-pop-pop, and the birds wear newspaper feathers, all tattered and sodden like it's been raining forever. I'm convinced that if Phila were an animal, it'd be a tabby that shits on your bed, but that you like anyway. My platinum Marilyn Monroe, Bridget Bardot, and Jayne Mansfield had a baby named Jewel hair is the only like it I've seen. This is a city of dark-locked frowners. The pale sweep of my bangs and wide open blue windowpane-eyes earn stares almost everywhere I go, along with the acres of my athlete's ass. I've never had so many men feel the need to comment on my body--to my face. In every other place, men might have lewdly yelled out of a window or muttered in passing. Never have I experienced the face-to-face challenge of, "Girl, your ass is so fine that I know your mama made you just the way you is!" Cornrowed African queens hate me on sight, thinking I've come to steal their men and play out some colonial world fantasy. I want to be their baby sister. I want to run after them and tell them, "When I was four, I wished I was Black because I lived in an area with dark-skinned women who looked like royalty with their golden turbans and bejeweled earrings and cowrie shell necklaces like a woman's sex-lips. I used to let men slam doors in my face and beat me. I wanted to be Black because I equated it to being powerful and never letting a man slam a door in your face. I wanted to be Black," I imagine saying.
It never happens that way, but I am alive.
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muse) wrote,
