"Chornaya" by Domonique Wilson - Contest Entry

Chornaya

by Domonique Wilson 

My skin color signifies a heavy burden- are you sure you wanna be like me?

My skin color won’t hide behind or in colorblindness- are you sure this is possible?

Your skin whitewashes my existence

I still look through and beyond the glass ceiling above my head in my own home.

My skin color is shackled with my gender, making it twice a hard for me to success, but best believe black won’t crack under pressure- just gleam and memorized in the light.

Are you sure you didn't see me cry?

Please don’t make me share as to you why.

I swear I’ll jump ship, just like my ancestors did, if this is how’ll we die.

You saw me swallow the pain, skip the part where I explain, and then have the audacity to ask that I rise?

And I am.

Aren’t you the one who fell from glory heavens ago?

So I stand on my feet, skin made to glow and beam

 I am rare and special

I'm nothing you've ever seen and nothing you’d think I’d be or even tried to see.

I'm something like your dreams, but more like your reality- wake up from your drunken fallacies.

I wanna rule beside you and use my past as proof that I can be anything I want to be- as long as it uplifts God and celebrates both you and me.

Being black is a heavy burden; are you sure you wanna fight against me? What baggage do you already carry? My grandmother’s Jesus said, my yolk is easy and my burden is light- funny how you represent truth and still not doing right.

Don't you wanna just help me? Not how you see fit, but in ways that I need it.

Trust me; I hope to enjoy the life that was given to me

Each and everyone has a story, a story of triumph and terror; Stella got her groove back in more ways than one; you already know that blackberries grow sweeter with time.

So please, if you don't stand with me, don't stand anywhere near me- I am sure that you won't like the monster that's been created, that my pain entertained, that my ancestors fought hard against, that your ancestors and predecessors tried to offer recompense that lacked common sense, and riddled with conditions- Wale told me that this would be my ambition!

My present does its best to respect you and my future sure hopes to defeat to you- better than I, better than we. EVER. COULD.

Curiosity at best, violence at worst-

I know I represent the EXTREME, but please L O O K F I R S T

Before you shoot.

Come to love me. Come to understand me. Give me time and patience- I swear I'll be everything I want and more- I know you don't like waiting.

But how dare your disrespect me in the highest form there is
and tell me that the reason I'm not successful is because of our undoing over the years-

please see the error in your ways, so that I can stop resenting you.

So that I can see how Jesus has always seen you- I'll be damned if I said he didn't love you, too.

I am my brother's keeper- I am my church's choir- I am the color purple- I am Idlewild. I am Maya, Faye, Phyllis, Mary, and some many more- I am Garvey, Pushkin, Thomas, McKay, and Hughes- and I bet they would be a friend on social media, possibly surpassing your views.

I am bold, bossy- made to show it can be done- not by my own hands, but yours, His, Hers, anywhere, anyone.

If not me, who, if not now, when?

- history repeats itself and here we are again.

losing focus, looking hopeless, and behaving like we don't know shit

- the universe will bless us with the answers we are looking for

that's how this post- I'm not for the boast, but rather the preserving of the soul-

I am not looking to your religion, your way of life, your truths to make me whole.

I AM SEARCHING FOR THEM ACTIVELY.

I am responsible for the passively- the aggressive and the apathy- the path for those who come after me.

I am black and I am proud- surely there was no other way- that's why Jesus is my father and I trust what he has made.

He respects my rights to choose, he loves me when I don't-

 you'd think he seek his revenge- he's promised that he won't.

Their eyes were watching God cause his will is sufficient-

even when you hid our God the first time, that didn't stop his glory- now did it?

He has to change his plan to fit our needs, why not the other way- seldom felt, and seldom accepted the price since has had to pay. I have seen the error in my ways and commit my ways unto the Lord, for this day, I rejoice. Today I am free.

So I am here this moment, representing the change I want to see-

I am black, I am different I am love- stand with me.

Be the anomaly.