The Blueprint

by Rae Giana Rashad

A smart girl made men believe everything good was his idea.

A Black girl gives and gives, why is she wrong when she takes? If you had to have a cage, it was better to have a beautiful one. Wasn’t it?

I would never know how it felt to walk boldly because this world wasn’t mine. My tears would never be a weapon. There was no patience for my softness, my wounds, my unraveling. There was no protection for me, a Black girl, no tender touch, no consideration for a delicate exterior. No space to scream.

Black girls are not parts created from perceptions. We are human in a world that told us we couldn’t be.

He looked Jefferson in the eye and saw his blueprint. Hold her as a child. Hold her as an adult. Hold her in servitude, even in death. Hold her.

There is freedom in releasing the words captured along the journey of a long fight.

Darkness always leaves a side door open. That’s what I would tell my daughter. Be loud. If you make yourself too small and soft, you would slip your own chains around your wrists without noticing.