Let me reverse time, Lord,
Let me be a time traveller,
Let me unravel and rewind what was,
and all that is,
Unsee and relive a different life,
How can one explain the extremeties of trauma through words and poems?
The repetition of words over and over to describe this ongoing dejection,
It can never do justice to what the eyes cannot unsee,
cannot allow the voice to sing the lies that were told to hide in throats,
to open the different quartets of the heart forced to shut down,
My skin wishes to perform orchestras from the bruises that were placed on skin,
I am gushing, my body is struggling to hold the capacity of life within this vessel,
this body that does not serves me,
A slave of my past,
Can I rewrite my genetics?
Change the chemistry of my world,
ancestral pain written in my very DNA,
my mortality of early death inevitable,
Debilitated in emotion,
This is not a poem any longer,
just a mere testimony of this plight,
Its as though me and my brothers have conjoined pain,
In this current span of time,
its as though we are all sunken boats,
With are heads bobbing against the water,
While we are shot down further,
Trying to grab the attention of those we love,
Yet onlookers just watch,
Everyone else, knows not what to do,
Instead just watches, confused,
My face is a lie, the way I dress is a lie,
I am a living lie,
These days I dream of my family,
How we used to be,
I dream of things being fixed,
I wake up thinking it has all gone back to normal,
A glimmer of hope in my eyes when I wake from slumber,
Only to find myself in the horror story,
The horror story being my life,
Where no amount of love can fix fissures that have occured,
There is only love infused in pain,
I want it to halt,
I wish to breathe and it not feel as though I am pulling meat,
My lungs string like,
My heart reckless,
Even my stomach has started purging when it cannot take anymore,
I wish to move and not feel as though I am trapped,
All this time, my body never mine,
Owners of the slaves I call family, call community, call it God,
call it whatever you wish,
My mind hunted down, beaten,
I have burn marks across my shoulders from where she played with fire,
Where she threw my frame around like a doll,
Pulled my hair around as playfighting with children,
And left me all bloody, as if lipstick was painted across my skin,
They expect us to forget.
Unlive,
what was unlivable,
Forgive me,
Lord,
If I have sinned,
If I am ungrateful,
My soul is so tired,
When will you take me?