Ode to the little child who was told not to fight
because their silence made them beautiful.

Because their beautiful made them too ugly to ever be raped.

Because she was so pretty they should be
thankful to have ever been so lucky.

Ode to the little girl who was told not to
fight because her silence made her beautiful.

Because being 5 and alive is cause enough for
annihilation and retribution isn’t for you,

so you must to die to yourself daily.

Ode to the 8 year old girl who was cut up so
beautifully that her gravestone outsized her casket.

To the little black children whose God got robbed
because their ugly had it coming.

You.

Are still beautiful.

Ode to the little black boy in me who was made
beautiful by adults two decades my age because my beauty had it coming.

Because silence has made a home here and
little black children aren’t even worth the price of their own bodies.

Ode to those bodies.

Ode to those bodies being temples worthy only of God.

Ode to those lonely nights of persistence where
quiet revolutions don’t happen till 3 A.M. when no one else is watching.

When no one else is close.

When you’ve bathed yourself warm in tears till prayer won’t roll off your tongue and no matter how hard you scrub, you still can’t wipe that stain covered memory of last nights sin. Ode to the sin. And all those moments when your body no longer feels like yours. When you’ve bared yourself bone dry from trying to wash away their touch. Ode to the touch. And silent mornings where waking up feels more like a funeral than a rising.

Ode to the rising.

Ode to being alive. And surviving. Still.

Ode the still.