nail polish activism

tw: racial violence

history taught me white folks don’t care about our blood until they can wear it as nail polish. ma’am what shade would you like? perhaps the macabre of my ancestors, dressed by a haughty whip and slithering rope. you may always alternate colors as well! we have the scarlet cacophonies of our black boys. slurs beating skull, becoming bat and parents are told not to come to the ball game unless they wanna hold their child like a shattered flower bud, beautiful black boy never bloomed before his bruises did. and perhaps a blasphemous red sea? dip your crescent toes in tallahatchie river; claim emmet’s legacy and it’ll be gorgeous until it stains your white picket fence.

history taught me white folks don’t care about our blood until they can wear it as nail polish and i shame them though i know i am the salon. they say i claim my honey brown skin as a gown, fabrics ablaze. and i say soak me in your remorse. soak me, soak me. dilute the blood. this blood, this blood. take it. ma’am i can be your favorite color.

and when did i say this? i can’t remember but it must’ve been when i was drunk on discrimination. so desperate i’d seek another oppressor in the form of an ally? and no these words did not flow from my mouth like a red sea but they must’ve hid in the way i glance at my white friends with desire. or the way my pupils break whenever black history is taught as though it doesn’t reside in my neighborhood. or maybe it’s because i exist. aren’t i asking for your pity? your white pity drowns this land, making us a sunken bone and the vultures can’t find meat but are they even looking? yes, we are only bone and you know the beautiful thing about bone is it’s whiteness. strip us bare, strip me bare. ma’am, for when you want to wear us without brandishing grim. black is the new white and for once we are your favorite color.