Scented Moments

Darkened Clouds

To self:

There will be a cleansing

Washing away of the trail those tears left on your face

Easing off of (painful) painful memories

You will forget that this morning you slipped in the shower

And blood was drawn, it hurt

Just as much as the pen tearing apart your fingers

 right now

There will be a cleansing

Which is not a storm

(With its flood and darkness and deafening thunder)

This is rain different

A God-still-cares in your ears

Pure water against your skin

Thunder to remind you that death isn’t your friend

The lure of sleep against your eyes

Sweet oblivion

A Cleansing.

But until then

Let the darkening of the clouds bring you nothing but

Hope.

Black Girl (Why Black Isn’t Beautiful)

You were taught life in black and white

Black, they said is for evil

When you were five

You realized that the darkest nights

Bled out the most nightmares for you

So when you turned eight

You looked at your skin for the first time

Saw black and felt

Trapped.

You were told how pretty you would have been

‘If only you weren’t so black’

So you secretly began to dislike the wrapping paper handpicked by God.

I’m not here to load you with cliches

You are one black-is-beautiful away from bleaching out your ears

No.

But do me a favor

When next someone despises your black

Wrinkles up their nose and gives you a poorly conceived nickname

Tell them

Tell them I’m not the bright attractive girl with endlessly long hair

But then again, that

Is a type of beauty

And it doesn’t have to be my type

Tell them

The sun has smiled upon me

Danced against my skin and liked her so much he hid himself beneath her

Tell them

My beauty is an exoteric type

It lies in the eyes of beholders with a little more depth

A little more perception

A little less – you

No

Tell them

This rich dark skin of mine

Is strong, resilient

The type that laughs in the face of years of suffering

Thant refuses to be bound any further in mental chains

Tell them

My skin is a balm to my sores

A shield to my scars

Tell them

Never again would I wear a thing of pride

With so much shame

Tell them

To keep their ‘beauty’ products to themselves

Because last time I looked up Beauty

She had nothing to do with the face

And everything to do with what lies inside

Tell them

Something so holy should not be desecrated

Something so pure should not be tainted

With your undeserving  so-called beauty products.

So next time someone knocks at your door with a patronizing black-is-beautiful

Tell them no

Black isn’t beautiful

Beautiful is jealous of this black.

Cut.

It must have meant something. No one willingly puts a blade to their skin without it at least meaning something. Love, loss, hate or all three. So when I walked into the room and caught you in the act, it was an instant type of forgiveness. Or maybe there was nothing to forgive.  ..But there must have been, or your eyes wouldn’t have been colored so thickly with guilt.

 I understood, too. That you needed to see the life seep out of you to be sure it was still there, that you could pretend some of the pain got lost in all that Red, that you could name yourself fixable because the scars would fade and take some of the darkness with them.

So why didn’t I? Allow you to get lost in your self-deceit and live you to the later discovery of your illusion?

Why didn’t I let you breathe with your own nostrils?

Because your bleeding was my bleeding too. Because the bottomless rage in your eyes crawled on my skin. Because I knew, that there was enough of it on the Cross that neither of us ever had to know blood so intimately.

I’m a good personish. I don’t deserve this

I don’t beleeh this.

bhil.flcgvjhbj so effing pissed.