Nomadic eyes
Our skins seemed like sincere apologies of burnt victims
A lifetime of not crying
Tainted wombs that birthed fatherless royalties
Kids who spend their lives searching for homes in isolated streets
Deaf to her voice calling them back
They are foreign to their own names
And maybe life is a transition
through the fire, the desert,
spilt oceans, mountains and crossing over
It is hard to learn that when you are consumed
by the sins that turned our ancestors’ skins
to said disgrace of fallen angels who carry dark souls
Our children have eyes that run and never settle
They tell stories of children free of lynch mobs
But still caught in not being great enough
Our skins are shades of honey and rising in fires
When your sons tell you their eyes are running
And their country infuses war on their skins and tongues
What do you say if you are a mother to a casualty of war?
How do you stop your men from dying young?
How do you make them look alive and remind them of how beautiful black is?
When they feel like weapons of mass destruction against their own people?
I’ve seen my people set a man alight
in the fight of who belongs where
Maybe they didn’t look in the mirror
They looked alike
set apart
by the hate in their eyes
