Black Rose

You,

creatures with glass eyes and loose tongues,

I bear the weight of your disgusted gaze,

bask in your disdain.

I read the questions on your lips:

Why is it black?

Was it dragged through ink?

Stained with ashes?

Trampled in dirt and mud?

Is it a mistake?

A genetic accident?

Or is its entire body a diseased bruise?

What could have caused such a grotesque deformity?

I always answer you

in a language you refuse to hear,

from roots you try to curse,

with beauty you fail to acknowledge.

I am black

to swallow sunshine with all its glory and pain.

I am black

to honor the soil soaked in history.

I am black

to live and sing in the glory of creation.

Yet the only place I grow freely is in a little girl’s dream.

And if you had it your way,

I would be strangled in a dead man’s chilled grasp,

to rot six feet below,

as if I only exist for the grave.

You try to poison me with a lie of worthlessness,

stirring your hatred into the water I drink,

spewing it out as venom.

But I wrestle the night

and am blessed by dawn.

A thorn stings my side

and I still grow towards the sun.

I have survived too much to wither under the heat of your stare.