Black Masculinity. Brown Boys.

For men who allow the limbs of their bodies to rebel against their minds.

When you were born, they gave you your native language.

Made into toy soldiers.

Camouflaged in masculinity.

At age five, you fell off your bike, scraped your knee.

Your mother picked you up; she brushed you off.

Your father, stumbling behind from the depths of his manhood, says

“Fix your face, real men don’t cry, try again.”

You’ve been in a drought ever since.

Age 11 your father gave up and your mother couldn’t stomach the resemblance in your face.

The block cradled you like the regret she painted you as.

At 16, the first woman you gave your heart to bruised it.

Wasted you on a killing room floor.

The words from your father still stain you, even on the cloth of his absence.

You cleaned and licked your wounded pride as told.

Left a bitter taste on your tongue.

Carried misogyny over your shoulder like a wounded soldier.

Patriarch society taught you that real men wear the pants.

You’ve wore women as a notch on your belt since.

It’s the only way you’ve been able to keep yourself up.

It trained to you to walk upright, and

clench your teeth in the war zone of your mouth.

Boots strapped.

Pants low.

Hold your dick as you would rifle.

Head high.

Grimace in your face.

Show the world you ain’t to be messed with.

You’ve been messed over.

You were never granted the chance to properly hurt.

Let alone heal.

There will be times when you pose as a brick wall who doesn't know the art of crumbling.

Days where the shades of your skin will be a thousand needless apologies,

forgiven in the comfort of these arms.

My brother tells me there will be times where,

brown folk will have to keep a shotgun cocked in our throats,

tongue tickling the trigger, and must not remain silent.

Times where you will harden your heart.

Standing in your ways as sturdy as conviction.

Wearing insecurity/hatred/misogyny like a suit of armor.

I assure you there is nothing safe about a guarded heart.

Like you it is flawed. Know that it will fall. It will crack.

It will break.

It will heal.

At times, it will shadow box itself.

It is a heart; beatings are what it takes.

Beating is what it does.

Question:

If you place a purple heart inside a black box, 

and it spends a lifetime attempting to beat its way out, 

does it make a sound?