I am 10 shades darker than awkward, I am what my opinion of myself contradicts,
a walking metaphor on the other side of a burnt bridge,
I shrink back at the sight of love.
My shadow follows a empty dictionary with no meaning
because I’m still trying to define myself.
Some days I love you with all I have,
other days it gets hard to remember your smell.
Forgive me but have I ever loved you before? your heart feels like a familiar place,
one day you might completely understand me but not today.
I have surgical footprints and I barely dictate my own movements,
I question God and why he has failed to prove his own existence.
I cannot change the world I barely change my screensaver,
I hold on to my own nightmares and refuse to give it to the dream catcher.
I love you but maybe not deeply enough,
everyday I try to leave you so you cannot hurt me 6 years from now.
you fell in love with idea of me but don’t know what my scars are about,
maybe I’m not cut out for this type of life,
the “happily ever after, til death do us apart”.
I can no longer play these fucking game with you,
don’t use me like a bus station, you cannot love me like it’s an option to you.
Stop treating me like an emotional doormat,
the fabrics on my skin wasn’t meant for the soles of your feet,
I was perfectly fine til you decided to halfway love me.

I’m a pigeon in the subway trying to blend with flamingoes,
I walk across the sun then slide down rainbows.
I wear a crown in my sleep and my heart beats to reggae,
there is so many things I want to share with you but you just not there yet.
Somewhere on the surface I despise you,
you have let go 4 times before, how dare you.
Yes I’ve counted, no I haven’t decided.
whether the joke is really on me?
and do you get a kick on pulling all the strings?
or do I control who we could actually be?
I try to think about people who could soul love me and I can’t even find one,
just a sad reminder of how lonely I’ve become
Maybe no one wants to know who I am,
I try to let people in but I can’t.
I don’t smile often, I cry instead,
but it’s okay these tears dry themselves.
Just waiting for someone to love me even when the lights go on,
I don’t want you to settle for me I want to be the one you chose.
I strip in front of the mirror every morning, decode all my emotions,
remove my insecurities, take off my guilt and leave my pride on the floor,
then put them all back on before anybody knows.
My silence too loud to fit in my back pocket so I have become it,
I’ve been running away since I was 11 but now I’m just too tired,
I can hear my mistakes catching up to me if I really stay quiet,
I give up on myself every weekend it’s better than pretending that I was trying.
If somehow your feelings change, I know you would tell me,
I’m not broken but some parts of me are missing.
This is just a fraction of what I have yet to say,
Still conquering demons in my own brain.
I hear my own voice while listening to 808s and heartbreaks
but when you finally figured out how to love me I just hope its not too late.

He touched me with the mahogany tree branch on his skin,
I could taste the cinnamon in his blinks…
as he stared at me,
I love the way my name emancipated his tongue into an African type of beauty,
and his voice was a familiar sound that took centuries to reach me.
he said “Nubian Queen, they can’t love your sunkissed skin,
but they don’t know that this is the shade that I’m inlove with.”

I’ve spend 4,015 days trying to wash away the coffee stains my parents poured on to me,
hoping that one day I’ll fit into the tone of my own painting,
waiting on my own people to recognize me.
Pain is black men telling you that your are too dark to make it to your own wedding,
that you have to try a little harder since yellow is not the colour you painted in,
rejection is black men telling you that you should start dating white guys
with stripped ties
who might love those charcoal tights,
and I looked for love in the wrong places my whole life.

So tell me negroid man how did you see me without the lights on?
did this melanin call the sun in your eyes like its dawn.
forgive me, I get nervous when you look at me,
do you really think I’m beautiful?
He smiled and said…
“beautiful is when you pour acceptance into the cracked spaces in your heart,
its when you are able to outline your drawing with love,
beautiful is being half a glass full but still enough,
its what your mirror is entirely made of.”
he walked into my life with soft honey melodies in between each footstep,
he counted the teardrops on my hands and said “Empress I’ve loved you way before social media turned you into a hashtag.”