#black male
Angelic medic design losely based on that early Mercy design from Overwatch. I wanted to make it happen!
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Thirst Traps
Moussa
Malik
Malik
Malik
Moussa
Moussa
To be young
Black
And male
How beautiful is your existence
How hard must it be, for all that you are and can become, to constantly be contained
Downplayed
Degraded
The burden swelling in your chest till you beat it out with fist
With yells of rage beyond your control
Then stare in dismay that this has done nothing
Changed nothing
That even what you lay your hands to can not make more of how this world sees you
Threatening
Dangerous
Menace
Thug
Labeled everything beyond yourself at no expense to the speaker
These words meant to belittle you
Shrink you
Confine you mentally till they can confine you physically
Either by the hand of the system,
whether it be the act of a lone gunman on a public street,
an institution betting on your failure as they build another prison,
Or by your own doing,
In a fit of grief-stricken rage, angst filled degradation,
Your fall seems eminent
Your death a known fact by all
I’ve never truly known what it meant to love a black man until I
witnessed one’s arrest the night before his college graduation,
heard one cry to me on the phone over a childhood friend’s death,
saw one laying before me on the concrete.
There is shock
tears
rain,
And all theories that this is some cosmic movie are gone.
There are no cameras for this,
only police,
street corners,
an ambulance.
There is community, there is yelling, there are questions
What?
Who?
Why?
When?
How?
Why?
Why him?
Why this day, this night,
Why these words, this escalation, these troubles, these heartbreaks
Why this agony of being able to do nothing?
Of being tormented for just being? Existing?
Living the lives your mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, ancestors bore into you?
These things are not always seen, heard, felt by all
Often experienced and then kept tucked in the breast pocket of our armor.
We shake our heads when we hear of it, then pause and cry over memories
Look at hands that can seemingly do nothing to stop the self-doubt and perseverance beating through our brothers’, lovers’, sons’ chests.
To be young,
Black
And male
What a crime,
A robbery of mankind
That the richness of a person is suppressed such that only a select few get to see their true light before it is gone.
So to the men I love in Georgia,
North Carolina,
Illinois,
California,
Massachusetts
New York
Whose blood and heart I feel everyday,
Whose struggle I’ve witnessed and internalized
I am doing what these hands, this mouth, this skin can
To stop this oppression
You are not alone in your fight.
Please,
don’t ever doubt that you are
seen,
heard,
valid,
equal,
whole,
loved.
