Grief Diagnosis
by Sabrina Spence
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” —Malcom X, 1962
Black girl grief wakes you up in the mornings when you wish you couldn’t—
splayed between satin sheets to smooth the kinks in your sorrow-punctured lungs
and keep the bruised walls of your heart from collapsing
in on themselves like water-soaked playing cards.
It breaks your glasses so every time you look through the shards
you see the fissures between the grave and the grass.
You can’t tell the difference when you step between them.
Black girl grief sounds like the empty whistle of hot wind
rustling through the forked limbs of decrepit poplar trees, whispering
that the current of your bloodstream is a flooded dam waiting
to choke you from the inside with blood-coagulated hands ripping
at your esophagus to pull your name away from your lips
and fling its letters into the dirt.
Black girl grief tastes like smiling through the silent burning
in the back of your throat as your grin weeps into the muffle of caged screams
and tamps your fear down into the irritation of your stomach lining.
It gives you constant indigestion but there’s no antacid strong enough
to calm the reminder that all the tables and chairs keep disappearing.
You have to build your own.