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.”
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