I woke this morning to find a mother crying on the television screen
Her son was following urban fashion wearing a hood over his head and it blinded him
His mother could not see that he was better off dead than being seen as a minority
To me it seem like he was at peace with himself
But it's how a year later a boy I knew named Shaaliver was killed and it happened three blocks away from me
My mother said she knew his mother and heard she was a dope fiend, I still don't understand why he was laying dead with a gun in his hand and his pants sagging past his knees.
What would happen if I was four shades lighter, would my future be any brighter? or if my skin were any darker would the cops be calling my death sanitation to clean up the dirt on the streets?
Would I get any higher going past the trees yet still being as low as society believes my future to be while disrespecting the fact that Billie Holiday sang "Blood on the Leaves" in tribute of my ancestors who wanted to be free?
I have enough pigmentation in my skin to say I will forever be an African American and that I'm much darker than the mannequins in Michael kors on Madison ave where I see depressed white women try to repress the fact that they aren't good enough for the husbands. But little do they know this is something that can happen to all women.
What would happen if I were born a boy, trying to hustle on the street to satisfy my need to be the person I want to believe I am since I never had a father to treat me what is was like to be a man? Would I try to replace every pretty face that walks by to create a mother to take care of me since the one I had years ago died yet the body she once lived in is still alive?
Or will I end up like Sean Bell, respecting the fact that I was made from Adam and I have found the piece missing from my left side only to be found the next day dead leading to my fiancée's future heartbreak?
What if I grew up to less fortunate than I'm now. Would I have to sell my body every night to live and watch someone make it rain singles on me every night while I feel like it doesn't wash away anything it just brings upon more sins?
Will I try to take acid trips to hide the fact that I'm pregnant as a result of accounted for semen?
Could I possibly get an abortion and write apology letters to my unborn child saying"it's not my fault my misfortune made me give you up and if you were to experience life make sure you get your equal rights and live a better way than your mother did in this society before I let you die?"
"I never even got the chance to hear you cry"
Or will I reach so far up my vagina in order to find some self respect or euphoria in Calling myself a devoted feminist while believing Beyoncé is one, but she uses sex to reach the top of the charts with her song "Partition"? I don't think I could take part in this hypocrisy since a women doesn't need to show her assets in order to prove what piece of society she is allowed to take part in.
But in the end of it all I don't think it's time for me to be proud of my existence
Since society refuses to allow me to express myself without forcefully molding my every aspect into something the can manipulate to only be seen. If I cannot be classified as a African American homosexual female in a reality that most refuse to see
without being called black or a bitch or a slut without me dignity being taken from me, than my last question for society is, "Who the fuck do you want me to be?"
