I thought only white women was foolish enough to let you in. At least that’s what I heard.
That you was a flu black girls was too concrete to catch. And even when we did, it was never like how you did them- they kids waterlogged treasures sleeping at the bottom of gracious lakes, or piles of dust in the trunks of they fancy cars, or dolls with pretty faces disconnected at the neck. Once, at the beauty shop, I heard that when postpartum comes calling white women kill they kids- black girls just kill themselves- a neat stitch snatched so quick and silent that it always looks accidental, like we punched the clock so hard that our hearts just gave out like we never saw the car or the man coming- until they hit us. But here you are, on my phone. And I’m staring at my walls like they been painted in spoiled milk and saliva. A baby that I aint healed from on one breast, a pre-teen so close to the other that I forget how to exhale for a second. I can’t even put them down long enough to hang this phone up.

 
 
 
 

Brittany Rogers is a poet, mother, educator, and a proud Hufflepuff. She is Co- Chief Editor for Wusgood.black, a literary magazine which creates a safe space for urban writers. When she’s not looking at poems, she’s decorating things with glitter and dying her hair colors black girls aren’t “supposed” to have. She has work published or forthcoming in Vinyl Poetry and Prose, Freezeray Poetry, Gramma, 3elements Review, and Eunoia Review