I would like to exchange my tough skin for your fragile one.
Your skin comes with a ‘handle with care’ sticker.
All that they can’t place on you they’ve placed on me,
Apparently.
This skin, chipped up carvings
Like the cravings overtook them
Like hungry fingers turned knives as they scraped my disguise, my dark layer of skin
Just to taste it
To test whatever we call that strong stuff that sits so firmly within.
To make an example of me
They mark me
With titles
Like nicknames that were never meant to dismantle my smile for my daughter who might inherit these labels because her eyes won’t allow her to cry as your little girls do:
Titles like
Durable, resilient, sturdy
Strong
Strong
Strong
On every corner and curve
There is no patch on this skin that has not served to support somebody who is not me.
I have heard them wonder at my strength
And discern that I am
Probably just built for this
I have learned to pretend I can’t hear because I will probably develop mental illness
Trying to make sense of this
Coded language writ on my skin in
Unfamiliar black ink
In language only I wasn’t meant to read
And I believe it says something like
Strong Black Woman
Cannot be broken. Tear ducts unused, unopened.
Strong Black Woman
Whose identity is no secret
We do not praise her
She does not need it
She is so strong.
So strongly opposed to this image used to dismiss her moments of break down.
Can she- is she allowed to not be so strong?
