Superb people, 

I’m surrounded by them

I peek into their success, screens serenading them with praise

I didn’t post my smile yesterday.

It didn’t feel right with all the pain.

But alas I woke to find another daughter gone today.

You made sweet potato pies

with a smile

 As if, this life was free

Collard greens aren't the same without 

smoky neck bones and unctuous 

ham hocks.

i am my freest self on sunday mornings

when i am full of sweetwater/lips wet

i see my soul from the front of a poem/and meet myself/at the end

i put my waist beads back on

Let me be clear— you

were expected, but not invited.

We, who came to transform barriers into bridges, 
steadying the foundation with melodic rhythms of blues unspoken, 
bars spit in cyphers shatter illusions 
America fed us as truth. 

Girls became protestors

Peacefully marched and preached for our rights

Tried to buy movie tickets for integration than segregation

I know why the caged bird still sings, Freedom rings, like liberty

What part of freedom is really free?

When the mind is shackled and the pain lingers from the past,

are we truly free at last?

So many people have died, suffered, been persecuted, wrongfully accused,

Abused and misused in this land of the free,

Wild to me.

That when I envision free or freed me

I see myself enveloped by the warmest of warm waters.

You are a space I’ve traveled

Not a familiar memory, 

but an epigenetic occurrence embedded in my DNA

Freedom to be a tone rich of melanin / Accepting my genetic makeup with grace / Thick rooted locs and heavy with the masculine