"Is this play about us" --- Sincerely, black people

magine standing in the sun and you receive nutrients, prosperity, and strength
Imagine the fact that your curls grow in the direction which defy THEIR definitions of gravity
Imagine you frown and still look like the most beautiful gift in creation
Imagine your gift yet your struggle transcending across generations, time, and space
Imagine if they created a narrative of you but the authenticity of your light shines through it
Enlightening the people with the very soul your god and ancestors collectively grew to make you
Your essence burns brighter than the systems they built to cage it in.
Your art transcends minds and your words influences all of whom you speak to.
You created communities of people your entire life, villages, coalitions—You were born into a multi-racial coalition of people who you are blessed to fall family.
and one day you woke up to see how many individuals you had collected through simply existing and being you
…perhaps to start a revolution or to join the people in watching the play-by-play of their suffering

Imagine… They knew how brilliant your people were so they built schools to lessen your people and the credibility of your mind’s intelligence.

and your knowledge and resilience even translated through the language they forced your tongue to speak.
Imagine a people were evolving in their nature and you fed them slop to slow them down and that slop turned into muscle
Imagine the ability to taste your own brown sugar
Yet they consumed you before you could ever know the sweetness of your own existence
Imagine your labor is your set of limbs. Which ache with generations of trauma, struggle, and systemic suffering
and then imagine that even while aching… you produce the fruits of their labor.
And you imagined it, or didn’t you