The unyielding

It is a sobering sixth sense of sorts.

I can see it coming, I feel the cold, calculating spirit, that bad ju-ju that comes through and numbs the soul.

A battle than spans my entire life.

I had to come to terms with that uncomfortable truth as a boy.

That I would need a unyielding skin.

Because I was a threat to the order of things.

Those projectiles flung against my spirit, I learned not to fear it.

In the form of the darts, microagressions and the blatant… that familiar foe of racism.

Time worn and haggard I couldn’t afford to entertain the grimace or acknowledge the pangs… all the same.

We have to forge along all while being told:

“Get over it.”
“It is all in your head.”

But I was told to fortify myself which that which could never be rescinded or repossessed.

Words, books and histories by way of stories.

Becoming one with them, being a willing ally, eventually learning that.

The pen is truly mightier than the sword.

The concussive force of storytelling about how I refused to bend, infused with a mandate from my Father:

“Be that cruel contradiction Youngblood slay them with impeccable diction, that pen is your sword, in your hand you will be a mighty man, mind over matter.”

I turned my interactions with racism into prison of narratives – a labyrinth from which there is no escape.

Exposing its virulence to the light that is only right.

We cannot expect anyone to bring us together…. as this is a crisis deep within, far from pretend.

A grave sin.

One that can’t be legislated or arrested into submission… this involves the human spirit, but we wield hearts too haughty to feel it.

We love the chaos and eschew the glory, how pray tell, is that righteous?