This poem is dedicated to all the Black women, especially dark-skinned Black women, who have felt that being Black was too much of a burden to bear. My message to Black women is to not feel pressured to change for society. Love the skin you are in because it is beautiful and unique. Don’t let society tell you differently.
Trigger Warnings: Self-harm, suicide
Four easy steps
She knew them by heart:
Wash,
Exfoliate,
Rinse,
And apply.
The now half-empty bottle
She bought from Walmart
Was dedicated to
All the nights she cried
Was bullied
And depressed.
For the days
She tried to fit in with the rest
It was her dark skin to blame
For the reasons she was oppressed.
This half-empty bottle of skin lightening cream was for
The pests: The vampires.
They wanted her blood.
They haunted her
Day in
And day out
For having dark skin
And dark circles around her mouth.
For not meeting European beauty standards
And speaking with an accent from down south.
But when she tried to change
Into someone she was not,
Black people told her she talked “white”
Because she used the word “literally” a lot.
It didn’t help that people said she talked like a color.
Yet colorism still existed in her community
Like it was a part of the culture.
And so did promiscuity,
Which gave a more valid argument to label dark-skin
As impurity.
Even when she rolled the dice,
It didn’t matter which side it landed on
Because she wasn’t accepted by anyone.
Her identity was a mystery.
She did not know who she had become.
The vampires still haunted her
Day in
And day out.
They wanted her blood.
She felt like she was in the movie Get Out.
Rose had those damn keys.
She felt like she was faced with defeat.
Because Rose had the keys,
She couldn’t leave.
She was stuck between
Not a rock and a hard place
But a knife and skin lightening cream.
She didn’t want to hurt anymore.
She wanted to die.
With the knife in her hand
She counted down from the number
Five.
Four.
She slit her wrist
Until she hit the floor.
The vampires smelled her blood,
A smell they couldn’t ignore.
So, they opened the door
And saw where she laid.
They sucked her blood
Like vultures.
It was the sweetest they had ever tasted.
They sucked until she was tasteless,
Breathless,
And dead.
They wished they could ask
What kind of blood that she bled.
For her blood wasn’t blood.
Her blood was the magic that she possessed
From being a darker shade.
It tasted like the cool-aid
Her grandmother made.
But what kind of blood
Could make her produce
Juices so sweet.
There was no explanation
Except that she was magical
Like a flower that grew from the concrete.
A magic she didn’t even know that she held
Because it was never able to introduce itself
At her funeral her mother wrote her a farewell
And written in it was the phrase:
The blacker the berry,
The sweeter the juice.