In The Darkness and Broad Daylight

I be cryin’ in the dark and in broad daylight
over fondled feelings, forgiveness and tired.
 
Cheeks wet with lack of understanding.
My drive for purpose and identity strapped around my ankles.
 
Be standing with all the tools to build path and glory
without the finances to afford the land.
 
Motherhood slipping through the cracks of my fingers on repeat.
Cause my blood don’t seem like my blood,
 
and the rest of them left my womb too early
like can’t nothin’ else beautiful grow there.
 
I be cryin’ in the dark and in broad daylight
trying to dig life out of all this death around me.
 
But I’m triggered in this heavy, so I paint it pretty.
Put it in poems and photographs.
 
That’s how I escape the world without leaving.
Although I am spent and famished on days when the cracks are wide.
 
Days when my emotions are abruptly palpable
looking back at me in the mirror with martyr on their breath.
 
Their warning to let me know when the monsters are coming for a visit
to move furniture around in my mind and in my joy.
 
The monsters show up with bloody teeth and uninvited in their spite.
And I just I be cryin’ in the dark and in broad daylight.