Black On My Skin Dream

Charcoal covering my flesh, my bones In my dream, I am a gorilla, I am a chimpanzee, I am hanging upside down in the New York City Zoo, picking off the ticks on others and being ignored by humans, the ones who come with food and hold the keys to my freedom, the end of my display. My skin is painted on black. I want to wash it off, but the color works like a deep rooted stain on the carpet. Some dirt just won’t rinse off no matter how many tricks grandma can perform with lemon and baking soda. My whole body is becoming like a rusted tuba on the third floor of a creepy farmhouse. Everyone is too afraid to come up and put their lips on me. I want to be a really good song about freedom but my penitentiary comes in a shallow form of indifference and neglect like a baby left in the bath water long enough for its skin to prune. Nobody gives a damn about my skin. I become something like bad memory because of it. Not in the way you forget but in the way everything comes out in bad dreams you try to forget upon wake. Grandma says the next morning, kissing my forehead, handing me pancakes You are beautiful in the moments nobody notices like a butterfly laughing with the crickets on a drop of salt water straight from god’s tears. I heard the snores turn to yelling, screaming, crying the apes are judging me and I don’t feel woman. Give anything for my hair to grow and flow straight Sick of being called Medusa with the snakes and stone stare. My grand baby, howling all night, get off me snakes I am no ape. Get those eyes off of me. I am no stone cold killer. Can’t you see I’d give anything to be different, to be a rainbow, to be that white woman who flips her hair in the sun to get a key to her freedom.