untouchable

you eye me with wanton glances

hoping the seduction of your gaze

allures me

you see my brown skin, its sheen

and grace in the moonlight

hoping to conquer its essence

flavor your experience with a careful sigh

and yet you fail to observe my distrust

the furtiveness of my sight

you cloud your thoughts with lust and submission

an age-old tale of beauty tasted and devoured

did you think your whiteness would sway me?

did you believe that some aspect of my very being

desired a recapitulation of the fair holding dominion

over shades of blackness?

did you lack the consciousness to interpret my silence

as a welcome beckoning

or my disdainful refusal as a call into my crossed arms?

for I am your dusky sally

hidden and ignored

stored away in your imagination for the moment

you desire to force your way into my space

into my body

depriving me of pleasure and consent

and yet

your lust perpetuates

it’s lacking and incomplete

you taste that which you cannot savor

you’re undeserving of pleasures you brutishly stole

try, I taunt

try

despite your corporeal fornication

you will never touch that what I truly am

nor possess the sweet willing embrace

that you crave so

you will fail, you will stutter

and in your weakness you will believe yourself king

the idiot ruler who holds no power

and your decrepit nothingness

wastes away without ever

knowing what it is to

be something

more

Silence

silence

words flutter around on flippant wings of thought

brutally beating the air in attempt to rise high

the violent impact of selfish soaring

forces down others willing for existence

recognition

inclusion.

moths to a flame

enveloped by whiteness

the view is clear and clean

with the turn of a gaze

lies the ability to see and unsee

obscure and disregard

all unpleasing elements other than

the clarity of light

blinded by white toxicity

furious scamperings fall outside

the realm of comprehensibility

for the swirl of insects above

but in that darkness the shadows creep

and eyes adjust to blackness

conjoining and collecting

gaining prominence and strength

independent and immune to the

fear of the dark.

drowning in the high white tide

I gasp for breath, seeking the courage to speak

I raise my hand, willing some recognition

I utter a question, a complaint, a reflection

but you’re already thinking

of how to shut me down.

drowning in the high white tide

my experience is made irrelevant

or touted as representative

of many brown bodies

i only know extremes

like the casual alternation

between feigned acceptance

(as long as i’m articulate and polite)

and personalized attack

so i stop gasping for breath

i quell my courage with a rising sea of anger

i submerge my hand in the raging waters

allowing the tides to take me

overcome me

flush me out

because i’m nothing more than a statistic

or success story

a number on a page, nameless, faceless

buried beneath the prose of another white savior

hoping that their verbiage masks

their lack of inclusion

but what if i became a mermaid instead of drowning?

what if, somewhere beneath the surface,

i’m watching and waiting

keeping track of your utterances

like dots upon a graph

diminishing you to a black spot

upon a sea of white paper?

unfair! you cry. unproductive! you scream

dejection and critique by the flipped situation felt

where you’re not in control

and you’re suddenly lumped into the consuming white mass

it’s funny everything you notice

in the silence beneath the high white tide.