Poem #410

February 13th, 2017

If I could write a love letter to you

I would tell you how I speak about you constantly

Yet privately I am distant from you

Stacking up emotions of what could have been

When in reality

My rational is incomplete

I support your DNA with grace

Yet shunned through the eyes questioning

How can one raise

Solely on one’s own

Silently a question thrown to the wolves

Since this life is the norm

Strong

Black

Stigma

The matrix covered most of the blue pill

Since 18 years will be covered by shadows of what used to be

18 years of being told that my life is only the reflection of my offspring

That 18 years signify how my dreams will only collide with walls of determination

And proving to the world that they are wrong

Needing motivation as a drug to live

Yes... live... a life that is sentenced to 18 years

And since you are my offspring you are destined to a life sentence

And since you are my offspring your dreams may shatter walls at 15

And since you are my offspring praying that you will not leave me just to be on a pole

Is the only prayer I will know

Because the moment my love died

I was giving my daughter a life sentence of what she could only hope for…

is love

So writing a love letter stops in tracks of misguided attention

Streamed to the world as hate

Yet I’m loving…

Black

Woman

Angry at the world for taking a man

Yet I pray to the Man upstairs to protect us from harm

I pray that he will guide me through these storms

He would not put more on me than I can handle

Yet HE never told me that a bullet of words would strike me

And have no compassion for a love that I can only write for

Classified as a gift

So I write love letters

To a love that has died yet left me his extension

With a hotline that needs me to guide them through life

Cradle her with love

Shelter her from triggers of

Self-hate

Denial

Truth

Through verbal designations

Since Valentine’s Day is merely about candy for a six-year-old girl

Yet I patiently wait for more

More of what love can endure

Yet I sit to write a love letter to you.