Roles

I am the first

First child, first grandkid, first niece

The prototype

The role model

Being crushed under the weight of responsibility.

My skin turns me into a walking movement

A library on black rights

A testing ground on what is appropriate to say.

Being a woman means my rights are treated as privileges

Means doctors can choose if they want to hear me

Means my body is meant to produce and nothing else.

It feels like my existence is an experiment

How far can we push the sad black girl?

What’s her limit?

Using me to see how to treat those after me.

Its a game that I can’t win and most definitely won’t lose.

I may cry in private but when I walk outside

Head held high

I am a role model

I am a teacher

I am a movement.

Even if I never asked to be.