based on my experience as a person of color

a mixture of things.

i dub this piece 'no longer'

i can no longer bend my knees to fall forward onto pavements when
you find yourself in distance places. places inside your mind, inside your heart.
i can no longer reach for your hands when the cold has numbed them
because i can no longer fuel the fire of your happiness.

it is not me, nor who i wish to be. but rather the stagnant situation
in which i constantly find myself to be in.
with my stresses and yours alone
i become brittle in speech, ego, and strength.
rather i bow down in disgrace, wrapped up in self-hatred,
for the self-inflicting pain the ghosts of your past
draws so clearly onto your eyes.

i never asked for your love, or acceptance
because that is the one thing that i have tolerated
from everyone. rather i stand in disadvantaged lines,
sit in chairs made of plastic money and pretend i'm learning
something.

we may have walked similar avenues, and crossed the same streets,
perhaps we danced under the same light posts...but, trust me,
we are not.
our privileges, our struggles, they're different.
our fighting hearts may lie in the same belief--
but you are not me, nor am i you.

recently, i've moved beyond the limiting fantasies i once
enriched my own optimism to be. yet, time and time again,
i found myself falling. pretending to be invincible when truth knows
i was the most vulnerable victim to myself.

i placed empty jars across the window sills in hopes
rain would fall in and not flood the hopes i had left-
but instead the frustration and negativity of others
cracked them through and through.

some times i hear that people have good hearts
and that their minds are just displaced-
its just another excuse to justify the wars.
the wars we fight inside, and the wars we start with others.
this fuel, expensive fuel, is just a catalyst, a tool, an ideology
that a power, a power of three placed upon us, above us, and on our backs
so we could excuse ourselves from our behaviors, and disregard our hurt for one another.

i refuse to believe that there are certain institutions that we don't agree with because of their oppressive mentalities and behaviors towards certain demographics of person(s). because behind those lie layers, upon layers, as if histories repeat itself without any reach for a discontinuity of its regression. we must remind ourselves that in any truth, there is a lost and we must analyze our understandings and the foundations of those thoughts.

we continue to evade, evade the realities that face us on the daily.
instead we mark tracks and race across boulevards looking for the
next outlet, the next comfort. we refute the idea that the self is the only necessity that may ground us, take us to the next level of our highest being.
we just mask, mask ourselves and bask in what we idealize.

don't call it love if there is no solidarity, because i have learned quite plainly that love is not solid, but rather cracked in tiny places upon a cemented foundation that we didn't build, but someone else did.

[addition]

we act like rebels against a cause. bridging between oppression and advocacy. all we fight is silence, inside and out. and there is no savior in mind.
just ghostlike histories of assumed identities in drowning waters--intentionally drowning by the lightness of you.

this fucking system keeps us down, turning ideologies of communities into gangs and shame into poverties through these undetected properties. and my brothers and sisters read the histories of your people, instilling lies in our heads, rather creating avenues of silenced, willing deaths.

it's enough you choose to exploit at will what lies
in your land, in your hands--but then you fly into our
'homes' announcing war to threats you manifested in the
first place, to instill broken democracies.

stop telling my family that if they keep afloat and listen
to your phallo-centric infiltration that we will
win the fucking war. this is your war, not ours.
trying to save an economy due to fear, when were constantly
losing bodies to your systems of oppressions.

who's to break down the beams that hold your ceiling to high--in which
cascading suns brown your bodies while others color themselves red, and others ceilings collapse due to the rain of your hate.

bars, books, buildings allowed for your elevator ride onto your
awaiting pedastools. i can taste the constant conspiracies in my mouth
and the way it burns my skin. you censor books that are necessity, vital for pure education, you stigmatize our drugs you pour billions into pharmaceutical companies to label something "safe", "effective" rather than investing into resources that haven't changed since it was written into the system.

justice. justice. liberty? pursuit of happiness? for all. mind you that 'man' in law was only made for one kind.therefore the shackles you continue to force us to wear disallows for any type of revolution rather a subjugation, assimilation into your own right. rights.

i can no longer collapse to my knees, and scream in bitterness. the anger ruptures through my body like dominoes, one after the other,click.click.click.

apparently there really is just no rest for the weary.