After The Month Ends

It comes in waves, that deep pain

For what feels like empty empathy

For our ancestors wearing shackles and chains,

Reparations some say are on the way.

Never again, feels more like a common slang,

as we still fight to defend

our right to be seen as equal in the eyes of many who claim

WE are the same…

Same or shame?

While you say same

Learn of the unnamed graves

That are still around today

Have things really changed ?

Or have our laws just become more ingrained

With no concept of systematic pain..

Hmm the same?

Some things seem very much unchanged

we still can not

buy our food in every market,

Get our hair cut at every salon,

Or embrace our history,

for longer than a month

And it is still not our full history that we are even taught..

Same? A word that gets thrown around

While only 400 years before some danced like clowns

wearing white faces and shipped in barells to different towns

and still make less money than many of our allies now,

Yet that research isn’t constantly perched out loud

After all It starts to feel like we are still seen as just a head count..

With equal being just a word

That’s tossed around to bary the hurt

While our laws are still bias to the changes

That’s have been so desperately deserved

Hidden with words like credit score..

So no one take a second glance

At how we didn’t start building our wealth

With the same chance

To buy property, instead we were the ones

Building the fence

that went around those picket houses…

We worked in the places we weren’t allowed to own

Banks would not even look at us for a loan

Our ancestors weren’t passing us down homes

With many of us stuck renting

because we can not afford to own

Down payment is dream

That some of us won’t even come close to see

Which just makes me more determined to believe,

In Martin Luther’s saying “I have a dream”

And unit together for the common theme

Of peace that comes with knowledge..

Because physically we bleed the same,

10 toes, 10 fingers and one brain,

We all are capable of feeling pain

And love like it’s a burning flame

So understand that we are not all the same

But our differences is what.. makes us beautiful..

I wish to embrace all the cultures I don’t know,

Talk to them outside a phone,

And let the idea of social media go

to connect on a whole other level

Like the first dusting of winter snow..