All my life I’ve wanted to wake up from a slumber, wash
dishes with the windows open blasting Otis Redding, find love
walking in any street & not be accosted. Instead I toss awake, run
my fingers through my hair, choose which clothes will earn
the least amount of stares, slip my existence into an envelope;
I hope my discomfort will comfort most into being quiet.
**
Love is not sending prayer circles to change my personhood. Care does not come
with a refusal to see me as what I am. When I walk down the street I want bystanders
to blush at the insistence of my smile full of glitter & dress in pants plaid-patterned
that earn plentiful praise or simply just walk next to people with love
that isn’t based on the ways we choose what people matter. I want safety to be a utility,
the opportunity to see myself & the world to bend towards this beauty.
**
It was dark as grief; dark as barracks of men that look my grandfather in war pictures smiling; dark as a gas station w/ the streetlight out; dark as my favorite jeans that don’t fit anymore; dark as a mouth newly opened; dark as an inactive phone screen; dark as the glimpse of an eyelid, as the absence of front teeth in my uncle’s smile; dark as rage sweltering from clogged pores; dark as roads after 5pm after daylight savings time; dark as Hickory Knob State Park after 7pm & hand motions at midnight, as my mothers & grandmothers & Muhlaysia’s hair; dark as the tattoo line behind my right ear, as the hollow of the human condition, as reflections bleeding onto the sidewalk, as the chicago bull atop a red hat background; dark as the slight opening of a cabinet, as a polka dot or a dilated pupil, as the pepperings of age in my uncles beard, as the funeral, as the food I can’t see in my stomach; dark as talk of the abuse in the family.
**
You ever got a gofundme donation & had to take that as justice?
You ever had to picketsign in front of a camera & a headlight
to make sure you don’t get snatched? You ever went to a restroom
& didn’t know if you would come out breathing? You ever been
the places that she been/I been/they been/we been? You ever been/
felt/lived a life that includes safety? All my good sisters look
just like Muhalysia. They all look goddamn pretty & prone
to bullet holes too.
**
Let me tell you the story of a tenderness the world refused to call
beautiful but it lives. Without watering, it lives like most cacti,
prickly & still, it’s always lived, & has centuries of history to prove it.
Don’t you know that if one of us fall & no one is around to witness it,
our remnants still get to be beautiful? Don’t you know that when you look
in my eyes you are looking into the eyes of someone’s kin? Everyday, I get ready
for whatever judgment day may come. Don’t wait tiI I’m dressed in sapphic
sapphire in my grave to sacrifice your pride long enough to call me beautiful.
**
I grew up 30 minutes from Muhlaysia & she was 2 years younger than me. Her mama
cuss & carry Southern drawl just like my bloodline. Her back has been against the wall
many times, she said. Slipping between genders sometimes causes a fall, after all. Everywhere
my people go, they carry tragedy & a smile. This isn’t a poem that will excuse
common genocide. All the things she went through were the things I wanted to prevent
her from going through, she said. What she came here to do she fulfilled, she said.
**
When I’m at my best, I love women like Muhlaysia. The best of me doesn’t
depend on how well I conform. This isn’t a poem about genocide; they just do
everything they do & it becomes one. Where is her 30 acres & a mule?
Where is the troubled nuclear family you always seem to reference in our killing?
Do you know what they did to Muhlaysia? is less of an inquiry & more
of a settlement. A woman that can be every kind of woman feels like fulfillment.
My community & allies want to see justice, she said. I am alive & you can
never take that from me, we said.
________
KB is a Black queer nonbinary miracle. They are the author of the chapbook HOW TO IDENTIFY YOURSELF WITH A WOUND (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), winner of the 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize. Follow them online at @earthtokb.
Photo of Muhlaysia Booker via her social media.
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