When people call black women strong it’s not a
reference to the tearing and rebuilding of muscle
tissue better than before
The result of careful practice, consent and
intentionality

But rather how the edges of their being is
weathered, is pummeled, is worn until they have
either become smooth as pebbles or as fine as dust
Either way she is left something smaller and
something missing

I ponder this while looking back at this past summer.
Where I’ve lost count of the times that life nearly lost
me. And how often I envied the dust . Where I
spent my spare moments scratching up my knees,
collecting splinters in my palm, seeking the
remnants of my joy that went missing

In this time, in the place between being and
becoming. Where I’m waiting to see if I get to recall
this reckoning as a random testing or a testimony.
Whether I get to say this one was worth it. Maybe if
I stopped analyzing my feet and history behind
them, or better yet the distance in front of me
littered with everyone else’s footprints. I wouldn’t
feel more acquainted with panic than peace

While writing this , I discovered that To endure is:

to suffer (something painful or difficult) patiently

Yet every woman 
I know who’ve endured were more hopeless then patient. 
The way their obligations and the potential whispers of their peers ensnared their
limbs till one morning they awoke 20 years further
away than who they imagined they’d be

Now, a man’s furniture
Oh how easily sun kissed skin becomes suede
Some pressure yields this melanin into leather.
Folding first in Halves then quarters then eights
Each crease, a smothered flame
Each bend another resigned conviction

Oh how easy I forget that I was the original subject
of this poem
And yet my mother —I mean I am my mother
Won’t stop calling me her strong girl
And I can’t seem to find right words to convince her
that’s the last thing I’ve ever wanted to be
And I can’t wait till the day we both don’t have to