Kimora Hornbeak Poet Spoken Word

Tantalizing in Fluorescent Lights

Sometimes I feel them counting me
with their eyes,
not looking, but tallying,
like I am something that can be priced.

Their stares peel,
not gently, not kindly,
but like hands that don’t ask,
like ownership already decided.

I tell them to get off of me
And when they don’t 
I stand there the same way I stand here,
learning the weight of being seen
and still unseen,
naked, not in body,
but in permission.

To them I am reduced,
an animal with conditions:
“prove you belong,
prove you are worthy,
prove you are more than labor.”
Why can’t I just prove I’m human and go home?
Let me go one time and then capture me,
I’m just livestock meant to be slaughtered.

I turned eighteen,
and nothing changed,
except the expectations
grew teeth,
gnawing at me to convince me of my hunger---
But I don’t wish to reach the stars
If I can’t ever touch them.

No one warns you
how exposure feels,
how it echoes,
how it lingers,
how it teaches your skin to remember
as it clings to every inch of you,
and crawls inside every crevice.
A cave diver that wishes to be a parasite.

They notice everything:
the thin, quiet history on my left wrist,
the absence on the right,
as if symmetry could mean healing,
as if clean skin means clean past.

And still,
why must I be opened like a question?
Why must my body answer
what my voice has already said?
Why must I be unfolded, inspected,
decided?

Decided.
Decided
if I am worthy of what I have made,
of what my family has made,
of what we have built with hands
that never stopped moving.

I am not your specimen,
not your threshold,
not your proof.
I am a working woman,
not something to be worn,
not something to be weighed,
but something that endures,
even when watched.

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