girls grow up in this world being trained to perfect pretty.. if folks call you beautiful that’s all you’ll ever need to be.. if you don’t believe you’re beautiful you have nothing more for life.. little girl, all you need to be is pretty.. that’s what folks tell you.. they do not tell you that your outer being is such a small part of who you truly are.. they do not tell you that this is just flesh.. that this world is just lost.. seeing with eyes as if eyes see the soul.. glaring into clothes and skin clothed in gold.. but all that glitters is not gold so never sell your soul for the price of it.. for we are all just mind games, visual tricks, deceptions.. //

 

my relationship with my body has always been complicated by brown skin, by girlhood, by curves, by sexual assault, by imagining that my God given temple was made for the world and never made for me.. my soul housed in shape that signals rape and rituals of wronging.. that invites the uninvited.. that makes brown and pale men feel entitled to my insides..

 

my body made me unprotectable.. my birth into blackness symbolized to men that i was never worthy of respect, real respect, like the kind them church boys give to they mama.. it symbolized to black girls that i was never black enough.. high yella skin.. product of miscegenation.. made by rape.. made by black and white.. blood tainted by torture and triumph..

 

my body is what they see of me, so they find permission to take me at face value.. i feel so belittled by society in my skin.. long to be seen as human and whole.. flattened to fat ass and false familiarity.. my soul screams - i am not body - i am multilayered, multifaceted, multidimensional.. the vastness of my being is comprehensible only in knowing me, not in seeing me..

 

i live in a world where my personhood is never engaged first.. my body speaks for my mind.. my body speaks for my soul.. my body speaks for my ancestors.. my body speaks for my spirituality.. when will my body allow me to speak for me..?