We Don’t Own Our Black Bodies

We don’t own our

black bodies.

We’re walking ghosts,

memories of our ancestors.

We’re tears that cannot

and will not be shed.

We’re hungry souls

that will not be fed.

We’re dead bodies left out

in the street.

It was once a tree.

We’re monsters terrifying

in the midst of a Dream.

We’re not safe

from the Dream.

It haunts us and murders us

sometimes from within.

We’re not safe in our

communities. We’re not

safe anywhere

our black bodies

happen to be.

The Dream won’t let us

be free.

We don’t own our

black bodies.

Peace & Love,

Rosalind

*When no one can be held accountable for the murder of a 12-year-old boy, who happens to be black, my heart bleeds. I don’t pretend to have the answers but I will acknowledge my own pain. Tears well in my eyes when I look at the face of a young child who was murdered. There’s two reasons for this: one is that I mourn another child whose life was snatched away from him before he ever had a chance to live and two, I see my own child in the face of that child. We tell our children that they must be twice as good as all others and sometimes that just is not enough.