Piecing Me Together

by Renée Watson

Because a fast song you kind of like is better than a slow song you love when you’re trying to keep your heart from exploding.

You told me that knowing how to read words and knowing when to speak them is the most valuable commodity a person can have.

And this makes me wonder if a black girl’s life is only about being stitched together and coming undone, being stitched together and coming undone.

For months people will tell girls and women to be careful and walk in pairs, but no one will tell boys and men not to rape women, not to kidnap us and toss us into rivers.

I hope one day my family gets to a place where we can be thankful just to be thankful and not because we’ve compared ourselves to someone who has less than we do.

I am wondering how choices are made about who gets what and how much they get. Wondering who owns the river and the line, and the hook, and the worm.

I tell him sad because I think white people can handle black sadness better than black anger. I feel both. But sadness gets sympathy, so I stick with that.

“But I think what my grandmother was saying is that it feels good to know someone knows your story, that someone took you in,” Maxine says. “She’d tell me, it’s how we heal.”