It's crazy how a blind eye can make the whole world blind. And the blindest eyes I've seen are the clearest. It's crazy how we're so jaded behind our eyes that our fogged lenses can't open up to thy neighbor. How I almost pulled the plug on my parent. How literal could the blindness be? And to the other I missed 18 years with to alcohol, I too, lost a parent. Or rather, had one yet to discover. You see, my eyes weren't blind, but they weren't correct. I filled my eyes with hate and malice and media and vices and resentments and askew morals so off, the blindest eyes would notice. But in life with every action has an equal and opposite reaction. For every wish has a reverse. For every genie comes the slightest sliver on Pandora's box, leaking and seeping onto the floor. The same floor where my sad and tired eyes decided I didn't deserve to live anymore. The same jubilant eyes so excited to imagine my newborn brother blinded by my imaginations and curiosity, to the astounding man he'd become. See these eyes have witnessed the worst. For every up there's a down a for every smile there's a caveat. So when you reinvent yourself and turn over that new leaf; remember that those skeletons have not died. That city life has more to the night life than displayed on a technicolor screen. My bright dress, wide eyes, and innocence, are unsullied by chameleon paint and turned cranberry. That glorious rosey confidence inducing catalyst, seems to not fizz or taste right. I'm dancing to hardstyle but my muscles are limp. Relaxed. See that boy on the train didn't just admire you. He obsessed and ogled and yet again managed to slip another tab into your coffee. My megawatt smile didn't just entice you and ask you to stay. It took my worst and built you a home. When those walls caught fire and burned our cathedral down. See my angels did not look like yours but they did not cheat me.

They've grown into our saving grace or our first level of hell. And God as we know him, has forbade us from cutting our hair, not because is it was in-trendy or unfashionable. God forbade us from blades because young native boys and black girls are too scared of school, because they could come home stripped from their ancestral roots and Identities for being to femme or too masc. but what you fail to realize is that Mother Earth put the bushes and leaves in her hair. And He made his hair flow like water. How the fire burning from your ginger hair should burn with dominance and drive, but fuels it with ill-will and severance. God did not forsaken and falter for an ear piercing. God sought action because my scars disks and staffs, were abolished and banished but morphed into earrings expressionism and cosplay. See blackface isn't inherently racist, but are those objects the ones you want to hang on your walls. Do you put the salt shakers away when the holidays come? When God isn't enough proof, so he sends a witness? Mommy why is our closet full of scary brown figures. It's third grade and my best friend Rashad Muhammad looks like this but why is he black and not brown? Why are his lips pink and his palms white? Why are their lips blue, and all we can say is Till death do us part? Poor emmet; junior, Nipsey, X, juice, Kole, Kobe, Kendrick and even my homeless friend Quadir. See God did not create temperance from the fruit, because of tattoos. God put that snake in the garden because our ink is the same stained across pure souls with stars, numbers, and swastikas. You see the stars that our eyes see, would much rather choose ignorance and the euthanism of a dog over a body with a different God. If your God greets us with open doors at the gates, why has the crucifix held our worst secrets inside the palace. Have you realized your jaded eyes have turned the streets of gold, into gilded rubbish. Because home grown stones are too, where the little rocky nine didn't understand the fuel and consequence. Where was the school from gentrified profits. So you mean to tell us we have no education and home, because our communities destroyed to Levittown? So the same air that we do freely breathe is the same process for filling beings with tear gas and poison? How is your God and my God different? You found yours at the pew. And I found mine at the drive from the homeless shelter to the AA hall. So I say that to say this, we did not come to talk about our bittersweet home we call mortality. We came to experience and learn. For God said there is a time to live and a time to die. So let me ask you, did you play in your garden? Have you thought about how cigarettes will take a year off of your life, and financial debt from nicotine patches, rehab and incessantly lost hope, seems to fuel your fire. Have you ever thought that the person screaming at you for help the hardest, didn't choose to smoke cigarettes or crack, or hear you scream of their worthlessness and shambles because it was fun? Because when my blind eyes opened, her curse changed. Life's a gamble and wrong place at the wrong time has a funny ass way of showing it. You never realize how much you've cheated. Hell, I've cheated myself, God my friends, relationships, boyfriends, lovers, betrothed, commitments, and so forth. Even our holy grail and greatest disciples, have cheated. To wake up every day, to live to experience, is to look God in the eye and sin. To take our wealths from the souls of Africa's Harlem Renaissance, to our motherland's rooted plains. And to think about how each day, we abolish and banish death. WE look at him and cheat. Now, Push your envelope father. You are you and you are your roots. This identity isn't meant to fit your mold in the same yours isn't meant to fit mine. There is no perfect time because that perfect time has a limit. My vessel is strictly that, meant for me as a rocket ship to my destiny. So you and me are not so much different, and today I will still love thy neighbor. I will take a bullet and die for my cause. And if it's my country so be it and if it's my legacy, I'll change it. There's always room to grow and make your self b i g g e r. And if you're the birthday cake needed to be cut down for portion control and biohazards baby, please, let them choke. For I am not judge jury and executioner, I am past, present, and future. See these eyes can put on the glasses, but they can not be blinded to the rays emmited from stars billions of years ago. And I chop and I bury this hatchet. I am sorry to those I've loved before and those I've lost now. If ignorance is bliss and love is blind, why would I have fallen in love over our first chicken sandwich? And imagined a far away life, in a far away place, surrounded by far out energy, and our beautiful children, so far from this wretched reality, that my twenty one years of nightmares have disappaited - And my bones have fused, molded, rooted blossomed, and grown together. You were my seed and for as many tomorrow's as i'll see, you are still the reason I wake up. That chance meeting with a stranger intrigued me from the beginning. And it wasn't just your words that caught my eye o la misma megawatt smile. It's how your words were spells , holding the weight of one thousand bulls barreling at us. How you engulfed me in a love so eclectic, I stopped by the grave to dance on it and pay homage to my past self. How i still stop by my bodega and pick up flowers for my mom and our ancestors. And when I felt like I was swimming in optic white, I didn't see the broken lever lever holding the dam of the damned, bastard, and distraught. How when I walked down that masoned aisle, it was not the prettiest place that kept me, it was the knowing that every fiber of my being was stretched and molded, burned and scared, cinged and scarred, sacrificed and and served, revitalized and chissleded out of that sandstone, until I was liberated and set free. I am a child again, even though our weathered brows and crows feet tell the tale of a thousand sunsets, a million smiles, billions of tears, and countless moments racking up like the pennies we stack on our desk for a quarter. We weren't just selling sunset, we were selling ourselves to be brought back to each other. See God took your rib and left it to die for the famished hyenas. Left it out of to be bitten, eaten, shattered, scalped, and slaughtered. But, my grandmother's house is where I found the alter. It was my true purpose and likewise, today I played in my garden, did you? And today I woke up again, did you?

Tomeka R

06/17/2022