Black in America

The flag still waves

but it sounds like chains

when the wind hits it just right.

I learned early

that silence can be a sentence,

that my skin walks into rooms

before my name does,

that freedom here comes

with invisible fine print.

They tell us work harder,

as if exhaustion isn’t inherited,

as if grief didn’t pass

from grandmothers’ hands

into our bloodstreams,

as if history ever clocked out.

The streets hum with sirens,

a lullaby for the sleepless,

and hope feels like contraband

something you hide deep

so it doesn’t get confiscated

by reality.

I’ve watched dreams get redlined,

watched prayers answered halfway,

watched justice move

with a limp

when it comes looking like me.

Love is a protest here.

Rest is rebellion.

Joy is an act of defiance

they don’t know how to police.

We bury our dead

with hashtags and candles,

then wake up

to the same sunrise

that keeps asking

how much more we can take.

Still

I exist.

Breathing where I was not designed to thrive.

Soft where the world demanded armor.

Alive in a country

that keeps forgetting

I am part of its heartbeat.

Black in America means

carrying grief like an heirloom

and still daring

to bloom in concrete.

It’s dark here.

But so were the wombs

that made us.

And yet

we came out breathing.