Photo of the Author
Life is a story
Too long to recite
So I wrote it in a poem
For you to listen if you might
Not a life’s story
From birth to now
But reimaging my humanity
And of how
As a first-generation college-educated black pansexual woman, I…
What a mouthful
Not symbolic to my insides
My motivation to appease is doubtful
And I don’t hide
I used to consider myself labelless
Until I started filling out forms
To avoid receiving less
Benefits to pay for my dorms
Because I fill a quota
A check
But am I guaranteed respect?
Dipping and dodging my peers
Who act like the press
But I digress
As I’m spitting my identifier
My label
I would like to just be human
But others not in my opportune are able
To speak
I don’t speak for them
That’s respectful
Yet we can converse about the struggle
Of saying how we’re suppressed into a label
How stating our demographics
Halts the traffic
Of new people coming into our lives
Not that we’re unapproachable
But we have to be mindful every time
Being asked by men
“What’s it like to be with a girl?”
As if they never been with one themselves
And now I’m invited to rock their world
They don’t care for the details
That my identity means I don’t go for one or the other
But whomever
Regardless it arouses them
I refuse to be present any further
Seeing relatives you rarely speak to
Asking in a consistent phrase
“Where’s your man? Hurry up and have a baby”
But telling them my focus is on myself is a shame
As if I did not spend the last 4 years
Buried in books and debt
Battling a broken economy
Hoping my major was worth it
But I digress
Let me get back on track
LIFE
Have I lived it yet?
I’m still young and alive
Can’t say I reached the end of the story
Yet I’m here on this stage
I’m speaking on the annoyances I hear
Instead of my life itself
As if those annoyances are my life
And not myself
The quarter-life crisis is crazy
But my feed is crazier
Hearing my people getting gunned down in the streets
Including the action’s justifiers
Telling my people to power through
And shout their name into the streets
Just to add more names
In the next day or week
I feel weak
It took four years
A PW place
And a group of people the place deemed misfits
For me to reimagine what I need in a space
Is it a utopia where my labels are unnecessary to discuss
Where Justice is served
Or saying no isn’t battled with coercion and nerve
But a place that won’t challenge me, I cannot trust
In my reimagining, I learned to just
Be present
Be heard
Post that article
Step on that nerve
You can’t debate in the comments section
My degree told me so
It did tell me how to paraphrase and reword
So on my labels here I go
As a gorgeous being who chooses to love whoever walks my path
And is educated to articulate that love and pass it back
To the ones before me who couldn’t ride with me
That if I’m taken, they will tell my reimagining, My story
I am proud of my labels
But I am unlabel-able
I am full of flaws
But I am lovable
Which keeps others in awe
If you think I rambled on
It’s cool, It’s fine
But you sat all the way through
So it was hopefully worth your time
However, it’s the end of mine
I hope what I said is close to fantastic
As I try not to trip over these lyrical gymnastics
So, in this instance
I did not speak on life
I spoke on existence
I am not a pro at life
I can only speak for now
To encourage you to do for the moment
And make our kids’ moment better somehow
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