Transcription
This poem is titled "The Black Girl ABCs."
When I was in kindergarten, I would stand in front of the mirror and recite my ABCs. I would attach a word to every letter to help with my memory. As I grew older, my word to letter associations grew with me. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now recite my version of the ABCs.
A is for animalistic aggression, the trait I use to make all of my ambitions come into fruition. I will not be silenced or told to have a seat. I'll speak louder than everyone in this room, but you better believe I'm going to speak.
B is for the beads that swing from the braids of every black girl before society tells her it needs to be straight.
C is for color, because success is measured by the paleness of your skin. 30-year-olds having an identity crisis because when asked about their heritage, they can't check off Dominican Republic.
D is for dedication. E is for excellence that runs through our bloodstream. F is for fighting to take back the cities you've let become crime scenes. G is for generational trauma, from my mother, from her mother, from her mother to me. H is for the hundreds of dollars being put towards making gentrifiers feel safe.
I is for the intersection picking people from the margins and forcing them to direct traffic. This world makes it my job to stand in the middle of the street, like being black and a woman makes cars full of oppression crash into me.
J is for the judge deciding who counts prison bars and who counts sheep. K is for the knife used to slice away at every black boy's self-esteem the moment he begins telling you his business plan instead of selling you his hoop dreams.
L is for limitless. M is for melanin. N is for negligence, the only thing you've maintained is a system that breeds slaves.
P is for the police officer strategically placed in our communities and within range to respond to calls about robberies, meaning you can take the AK off of your hip when you're standing 20 feet away from a park full of kids.
Q is for quit, for the teachers working within doomed districts. R is for the red lines on our streets. S is for the smoke shop placed on the block where all of the kids meet. T is for the turnstiles we jump over every morning on our way to the pipeline with mismatched priorities, giving one school new computers and the other metal detectors. One school provides laptops and the other bag scanners. One student is offered a book, the other has one thrown at them. Undeniable bias on the basis of pigments, very slow to solutions, as if you haven't noticed the damage. Why are you ignorant to the sturdy systems you've set up?
X outs every loophole you've laced in our laws.
Y is for young, as in I am too young to be writing this poem, and I am too young to know what I want written on my tombstone.
Z is for zero, which represents the score: Us Versus Them. Well, US versus years of prejudice.
When I was in kindergarten, I would stand in front of the mirror and recite my ABCs. Now I'm 17, standing in front of the mirror teaching myself how to remain calm if I'm ever stopped by the police.