Letter to My Future Husband

I feel like a rare species. Like maybe I belong to a class or phylum of organism that are supposed to be… I hate that word that I have to use. You abandoned me. I’ve written to you, 12 years and still you can’t.. No. You refuse to find me. I’ve lost weight for you. I’ve straightened my hair for you. I’ve deprived myself for you. I’ve loved and lost for you. I thought I met you, seen your face in my visions, only to be made a fool of. Then I saw the light, loved myself from within, meditated, and dedicated my life to me and only me. But my heart aches for you. An emptiness inside that no amount of self love can fill. I’ve cried out to you in my sleep, a nameless entity with a blurred face in my dreams. Except that one fraction of a minute when your face became clear as water. Now that I think about it.. It was probably something I ate too late, the night before. Tell me. Send me a sign that you don’t exist and I’ll stop writing you every year. I’ll become a widow to a ghost whom never made it to human fruition. Burn the idea of you on stationary and watch the ashes melt in water. Tell me. Tell me. I’ll stop.

Sincerely,

Your Wife That Never Was

Letter to My Future Husband

Dear Future Husband,

I’ve been writing to you every year for fifteen years. Since I was 19 years old. I remember the first letter I wrote to you. It was on creamy stationary, smooth ink swirled cursive descriptions of how I couldn’t wait to meet you. Giggling to myself as I laid across my stepmother’s floor, guessing if you were tall, dark, muscular or trim. Then at 20 I typed in an open poetry forum online, that I was still yearning for you. As the years went by I became more and more impatient. I grew tired of dead end relationships, emotional abusive men, and paying for the hurt the last woman did to them. Each break up, I internalized as a slap in the face from you. A “haha you thought it was me” cruel joke you played on me.

Last year’s letter I wrote to you, it was during a crying tirade. I had just ended a “situation” with a man who I thought wanted to be with me. I asked the dreaded question.. “What are we”? And he told me he didn’t want a relationship right now. Although, I had told him at day one, I wanted a fulfilling relationship. I thought he was you, you was him, and we were about to be one. That’s what hurt the most. You continue to fool me time and time again.

Now here I am, turning 35 in a couple of months, and I have yet to lay eyes on you. I’m asking myself why do I continue writing to an entity? When honestly, I don’t think there’s anyone out there for me. I have a hard exterior, I talk too much, I’m careless with money, and my weight… Deep down inside I think you can do better than me.

Write You Next Year,

T. M.

Summer in the South

Sticky. Bright. Moist. Stifling. Hot. Virginia summers are miserable. I can hardly breathe walking to my car. Sweat drips down my chest between my breasts. My sundress sticks to my legs. The cicadas erupt in song and a skenk scurries across my path. Dust erupts on the dirt road to Carolina. Corn stalks. Tobacco leaves. Horses under the shade of trees. Six farmer’s markets. Each a mile apart. Advertising for apples. Peaches. Blueberry tarts. Homemade ice cream. Fudge. Honey. Fresh cream.

The door chimes. The aroma of Boiled peanuts and pickled eggs greet me at the entrance. A woman with skin like old tanned leather stands at the register. 25 on 2. A bottle of deer park. A bag of peach gummies. Back on the road again. I reach my destination. Large front yard. Lake in the back yard. Modular home. A picnic table in the front yard. The front door is open. I can smell home through the screen. Pork bbq. Carolina Gold ribs. Baked beans. Isaac Hayes serenades. I’m home.

Self-C(aw)are

I should have did my face masque two weeks ago. Scrub the bacteria, germs, regret, and depression that are imbedded in my pores. Laziness. Procrastination. Poor time management. I should have clipped my toenails. Buffed the bottom of my feet to silk. Filed my toenails to a straight, neat, square. Coated them with Wet ‘N’ Wild Cherry Red. Extract walks of shame and poor choices from them. Laziness. Procrastination. Poor Time Management. At least I got my hair done. Flowing waves of jet black hair, surround my face. Protective styling it’s called. Protect my mind from thoughts of low self-worth, fading confidence, and non existent self-esteem. Unorganized. Car looks as though a tornado hit. Paperwork, clothes, shoes, dishes. Moving. Moved three times in six months. A whirlwind in my chest. “Self-Care is paramount”. With what time. I barely have time to breathe. But self-care is breathing. So I spark, inhale and exhale complaints about my disorganized life. Not one fuck is no longer given.

Studio De Glam: Representing the Culture of Black Hair

The 90s.The best decade of all time. If you were born in the 70s, you had the time of your life in your late teens and early 20s in the ’90s. Us 80s babies, we can sit for hours and reminisce on the games we played as children, the toys we had, the shoes and clothes we wore. But the culture of our hair back in the 90s, is a whole new level of conversation. Box braids, track ponytail, Just for me relaxer, ponytails with the big balls and barrettes. Our confidence soared as the hair stylist parted our scalp into boxes, weaving extensions into the knots, the ends melted to perfection. Colorful beads adorned our long and luxurious braids, gold hair jewelry, bright colored scrunchies, and wooden shells.  The ‘90s was the climax of African American culture when it comes to hair, clothes and music.  As the years went by, new decades bringing different flavors, we forgot about the culture of African American hair.  The natural hair movement took over. Black women grasping at straws on how to grow hair without the help chemicals. Hair stylists came to the rescue, taught us that protective styles is our savior, reminding us to go back to our roots.  To not forget about the extension braids our mother put in our hair to help our hair grow back to health after one relaxer gone bad. How the extensions protected our hair from the elements of weather, cotton sheets, and time restraint.

Studio De Glam, a hair salon in Connecticut, that specialize in natural, weaves, and braids, reminds us to never forget our roots. Putting cute faux locs in baby girls to protect their hair from breakage during the summer months at grandma’s. Sewing long beautiful tresses in young black women graduating high school, so hair care is the least of their worries during their freshman year in college. Quick to tell natural women to not be afraid to go for what they know. What they remember. Sometimes you must use a hard brush, water, and Blue Magic Hair grease to get that 4C up in a bun for work the next morning.  Studio De Glam celebrates black hair for the natural, the “good hair”, the lace front,  the extension braids, and the weave. If you’re ever in the area tell them that The Lady Interrupted Sent Ya!  

You Are What You Steep

You are what you steep, you’re crew is what you brew. Relationships full of ingredients you’ve stored in your heart. You say “play your part”, but betrayal is a part of you, you love living risky, never look before you leap. Trust as fragile as China, and yet toxic relationships you love, having it on wind up.

You are what you steep, a mixture of bitter tea. Sour herbs, deep from the roots of within you. Afraid to pluck the root, kill the weed and fix you. So you harvest poison, serve it, to the very guests, who long to poison you. A cycle of cyanide, arsenic, and strychnine. Tastes masked in promises of loyalty and honor ability.

You are what you steep…

Fair weather friend

I was just thinking about you.

Til Death Did Us Part

Ali’s giggles and smiles, dark hair and flirtatious thick lashes, whisked her into the arms of lust, lies, and cruelty. Caviar, Cristal, maybelline, and L’Oréal, couldn’t save her. She put her life on the line for us. Yvonne’s words of heritage and culture, black text of mixed musings and lady poetry, couldn’t save her. Love intertwined lust, fulfilling the heart but choking the mind from clear and cohesive thoughts. She put her life on the line for us.

A separate fight for women. A separate stereotype, a separate prejudice. A separate blame game. Should’ve did this. Why didn’t she do that? Ever been in love? In love so hard it blinded you into madness? Ever experienced something so traumatizing, you needed IV medicine to forget it? Too much of a good thing can kill you. Literally. Silently. Invading your body, taking over your soul. A parasite sucking into you until it becomes one with you.

We were warned in the early 90s by Elizabeth Glasser that women’s lives were in danger. We were warned by black women in bamboo earrings, Gloria Vanderbilt jeans on size 8, modelesque bodies, cute Toni Braxton hair cuts with wet n wild lipstick cherry colored lips, that a virus had no particular look and it damn sure didn’t have a preference.

We were told in the ’00s by a young, beautiful, black, athletic, teenage girl in the prime of her life, that a virus didn’t give a fuck if you were an innocent bystander, preparing for college on a track scholarship, and never even thought about having sex before. Before the tall, dark, and handsome entity that invaded her space unwillingly.

I was in the clinic crying desperately.. Out to God to please save me from my own foolishness. Wrap your arms around me and save me from my own demise. “God, I know you ain’t gon let me go out like that”? When that lady told me “negative”, the breath I’d been holding for two weeks released from me. Tears flowed… Endlessly.

Women. Saving women. By dying to save women. Dying to warn women.

https://gettested.cdc.gov/

Celebrating Black Women: R&B Singer Erica James

Erica James, song bird hailing from Connecticut has just released a new single.  Her light, pretty voice is nothing less than a breath of fresh air. Last year she debuted her music with single “Barren Land”.  This year, she released a new track titled “This”.  The new melody perfectly describes the shivers we get when we vibe with someone new.  The butterflies we get in our tummy when he calls or stops by.  “This” describes the intense emotions we feel when we admit to ourselves that we have fallen in love.  Her vocals are sweet, melodic, and the beat is smooth sailing.  I played the single multiple times throughout the day. While doing some light morning housekeeping, driving around to run Sunday errands, and while relaxing drinking a glass of wine. I imagine “This” being in rotation on a Jill Scott, Ledisi, or Erykah Badu station on Pandora. I have faith that “This” will be a Soul Train Music Award nominated single, if not Grammy nominated.  Sit back, relax, and listen to “This”.

This by Erica James

 

Puppets

Queens build each other up instead of tearing each other down, while we burying each other, fuck niggas stealing our crown. Fuck us over six ways from Sunday, selling souls on tv, Mona Scott Young is the mask behind the devil goat Lucy. Take a bow you’re on Monday, nights rich in blood lust, you have ten years to pay the piper before you go back to dust. Screaming “Stay Woke” when the motherfucker sleep with the rest of them, eat with the rest of them, drink blood with the best of them.

There ain’t shit that a self hating bitch can tell me, about getting a man or how to secure the bag legitimately, without selling my body or manipulating a narcissist to put a ring on me. When the bitch look like every other chick grown in a laboratory. I can’t report live hardly, without you fucks looking sorry, give excuses for a pity party, because you look at facts so blindly.

They hate women like me… They despise women like me. Because I expose the truth and they try to make me look bad like they did Angie.