Healing
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Don’t speak to me of “healing” racism,
Or “wounded souls” or the “painful hurt”
Until you are willing to look at my skin
And see the whip marks on my great-great-grandmother Laury’s body.
Don’t speak to me of “values”
Or “justice” or “righting the wrongs”
Until you are able to feel the heartache of my great grandfather Graham
Whose own father was sold before he could know him.
Don’t speak to me of “equity”
Or “opportunity” or the “common good”
Until you are able to hear the fear in my grandmother Mae’s voice
Arriving in New York at 16 in her first real pair of shoes.
Don’t speak to me of “passion”
Or “longing” or “standing on the side of love”
Until you know the shame of my mother Edwina
Whose teachers made an example of her body
Calling the beautiful curve of her lower back primitive.
Don’t speak to me of “together”
Or “understanding” or “empathy”
Until you know my rage at being denied work by a white woman
Who said I don’t act black or masculine enough.
You want to speak of “healing”
But the pain you are trying to heal has no real name.
This “pain” you speak of has no story;
Like your tepid desire to actually make change,
It is anonymous, vague…empty.
Don’t speak to me of “healing”
For, I heal the second I am ripped apart.
My wounds self-suture,
And like the clever creature I am,
I just grow new legs to outrun the pain even faster.
It is something I have had to practice as long as my ancestors have known you,
And that seems like an eternity.
So, don’t speak to me of “healing”
Because you cannot know what healing means
Until you have known what it means to be hurt.
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