Another Middle-Class Black Kid Tries to Name It

Lyrics

I used to dream about a woman trapped inside a burning house. That isn't how she went, my grandmother. Instead, the hood is full of grief that moved inside her like a drunk man's fist. All I know about my father's mother are these holes in her, the holes she left. My father, pulled over to the side of the road, crying because a song spills through the radio. I think her grief moved into my father when he was born & into his daughters when we were born & I'm sure someone's tried to tell you the blues is only music, but the radio the radio. * Once, I watched my teacher tell another brown girl her language was too beautiful to belong to her Once, my teacher bought me a cheeseburger & asked how come the other black kids weren't more like me. Once, the girl pinned me to the wall until I called myself, or her, a nigga & all week I wore her fingers as a bruise. That year, I wore cargo shorts through the winter, books in each pocket, haunted hallways full of words that weren't my own. * Is there a word for a child talking to himself or no one?         I've said ghost but I do have skin & a father, after all. Hands after all, dirt colored & not buried in the dirt. Sure, I've been opened the way girls are opened. Sure, I've been a dark thing gone missing in the dark. Sure, I've looked at my sister & seen a woman caught in flame. But we have pills for that. We have money for the pills for that. * Please— what's the word for being born of sorrow that isn't yours? For having a family? For belonging nowhere? Not even your body. Especially not there.