Deception.
Graceful and ethereal
below the male pedestal
with a mask and a bow
to hide your dark features.
Is that all that you are?
That's not all that I see.
Lift your spine, shed your mask, Sister
and you'll see what I mean.
Truth.
Battered, not broken,
by cruel hands, yet unspoken
unless uttering a prayer
to Lord Almighty and his savior.
Is that all you have to say?
That's not all that I hear.
I hear anger in your voice
above the pain, beyond the fear.
Past.
A chitengi in the wind
with wild hair to match brown eyes,
gazing far beyond the safari,
fitter than most to fly higher than any sky.
Is that as high as you can soar?
For that is not the limit of your wings.
Those dreams you once conjured
Need not know boundaries.
Now.
'Tween truth and deception
is one last critical question:
is that all, Sister?
I can not rise and straighten my spine
while you bow before them low.
Nor can my voice, white-hot or not,
be heard if your silence continues to grow.
I will not tame the wind.
It will tame me,
and you, and others,
who dare to act on these dreams
of freedom, of fighting, of wild hair with wild eyes,
of a world we've yet to know
where dark women don't simply fall,
we fly.
