Jackal

by Erin E. Adams

Danger for Black girls was different. It didn’t obey the boundaries of stories. For them, it was always real.

Time continued, but she was forever divided: There would always be before this moment and after it.

All this pressure is because she loves me. Her love is overwhelming.

None of that can change the fact that she lives in a pristine home with a pest problem.

The officers turn to me and I wilt. I don’t like their attention in any capacity, even if it’s positive.

still avoiding the truth: Being blind to color only makes you blind.

Though they seldom ask, men need to be cared for.”

When my mom started noting the number of American flags going up in the neighborhood, I got scared.

Yes, Black folks are masters of joy. Trauma isn’t the only thing carried in DNA.

Freedom could be found in the woods, just as easily as chains. The trees held both healers and hunters.

What is a little erasure if it ensures excellence? It’s just a little bit of yourself. The bit that doesn’t fit.

“Doubt can open a door in you for anything to walk through.”

Nothing in the woods made her go “mad.” The indifference of the world did that.

This is the price of living here. In America.

Good Black folks who don’t bring up race. We don’t make a fuss; we don’t make things uncomfortable; we are calm and cool and collected at all times. Even in the face of death.

I haven’t become a bitter woman in my thirties as much as I’ve become a smart one.

Lumping Africa into a monolith is a side effect of erasure.

Seeking meaning and identity in African countries or cultures over American culture is a common desire.

often we aren’t ourselves, but what others make us to be.

Chris doesn’t open the curtains, he doesn’t want to let the light in on an act that feels more suited to night.

Light and shadow are each defined by the absence of the other.

One drop in this country is all it takes. Being a Black girl is inhabiting a cruel riddle: Your beauty is denied but replicated. Your sexuality is controlled but desired. You take up too much space, but if you are too small, you are ripped apart. Despite the wash of it, that’s one thing you can always count on whiteness to do: destroy a threat.

Shame grows in silence.

You learn a lot about a man by telling him “No.”

I know the truth of Anubis, not what Jack would make him. The god of lost souls. It was his duty to guide them home. He would measure your heart against a feather. And if your life was found lacking, it would be eaten. Destroyed.

After a life of shadows, finally, in death, I am seen.

Life doesn’t add and subtract evenly. It isn’t balanced on scales.

If there’s one thing fear can do, it’s make a beast out of a shadow. It turns us all into monsters.