Every Body Looking

by Candice Iloh

For all my wondering, questioning, and dreaming little sisters/sibs feeling your way through everything so you can be and do what you want in this world. For the first-gen kids. For the young queers. For the dancers and wannabe dancers. For the survivors. For all of us who needed to change our mind. For baby Me.

buzzing with families proud of children they don’t really know

I will not miss these prayers in someone else’s name these requests that god stop me these scriptures written by men

Dad reminds me that I’m not flying 697 miles away from home to be like this world I should remember from the moment I set foot on campus I’m supposed to be a light for Christ

everyone telling me about this new person I’ll be while begging me not to change at the same time // new city new people but always new in Christ

When people talk about college they never really talk about how you’re going to change before your whole family’s eyes

made me question why we couldn’t do things with our own strength started wondering what my father was so afraid of what was on the other side of amen that was so bad we couldn’t just do it

Words are powerful unless they’re not biblical unless they’re not written by men unless they’re unlike Jesus’s spit itself why can’t I pray outside of his name? why is my name not enough?

Ada (Aah-dah!) in the Igbo language means first daughter means oldest girl means pressure means you are expected to do a lot of things you don’t want to do because the honor of this family rests on your back

Nothing is wrong except there is a car with sirens on its roof in our driveway& there are two tall white men standing on our porch& there are two men looking beyond me into our kitchen& there are neighbors peeking out windows at our house& there are huge cops with guns I can see who’ve come to tell me that I’m too loud too much too free

Dad said he would send me money every month so I could focus on school but I knew he’d use that to control me parents paying for their kids to be in college still try to tell you what to do from across the country

a light shining bright enough to see the place where I am both dead and alive

begins its ritual where nothing can numb me where I am possessed by my own fear

a little girl who lives inside me is demanding that this stops feels knives clawing at her middle

There are things they tell you get easier with time that one day you’ll grow up and be able to take it all they say this is what you have to do to be an adult this is what you have to do to survive you will not own your body you will not own your things you will not own your feelings you belong to the world to them to Him

We always say amen at the end of prayer when amen spread out into two words spells a-men which doesn’t even make sense when there is only either a man or many men either way was taught early one man or many men only want one thing and it starts when they’re still just boys

mad at this sad option that looked nothing like what I want

DREAM: To dance HOW: Whenever, wherever I can learn for free cause I don’t need to pay nobody all that money to do what’s already in my heart

let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man rather, she is to remain quiet the second chapter of First Timothy making man and god sound the same

I want to learn from who I want and I do it on my own terms besides, they still out here acting like ballet is the holy grail of dance like . . . ain’t this a black school?

cause women are women and men are men and they shouldn’t be out here tryna do what we do