How The Black Woman Sells Herself
Take this skin—
it caught a lot of eyes, wasps to honey
stung enough that I never forgot
where the pain lived, how I slept
or did not sleep, in the sweet-bodied night.
Take these eyes—
they’ve seen what they can
and could not know if they were
drowning themselves or dying of thirst,
and couldn’t change a thing.
Take this flesh—
a meal for bigotry, a season of undoing,
a lifetime of being mid-city school district
and the Lord’s gospel, they’ll all say
it’s never enough or more than I need.
Take this heart—
it still beats around half-digested dreams,
it looms too large in this chest cavity
of headstones and names like graves,
it’s a call never answered or received.
Take them away—
if I must choose emptiness to live
let it come, let me be free.