I WOULD BE BLACK IN EVERY LIFETIME

Photograph: Jamel Shabazz

I often write about the hardships of being Black in America, and beyond America, because these are realities, and realities must be said loud and clear. That is my duty as a writer, my responsibility as someone who refuses to let history be buried under the comfort of forgetting. I have written about how the world conspires to break us, how systems were built with the intention of keeping us bent, how the weight of whiteness is not only a history but a present, a force pressing into our backs, into our lungs. I have written about the theft—of land, of bodies, of time, of names, of possibilities. I have written about the sorrow that moves like a river beneath our skin, the grief we inherit before we even understand what we have lost.

But I do not want anyone to be mistaken.

Despite it all, because of it all, in defiance of it all—I love being Black. I love it the way a person loves a song he has known since childhood. It is not simply who I am, but how I am, the rhythm of my speech, the sway in my step, the words in every sentence I write. It is the way the sun blesses my skin, the way my laughter moves through my body like something ancient, the way my people, even in our mourning, still know how to celebrate.

I would not change being Black, not for a moment, not for a fraction of a second. I have known pain, yes. I have known anger that rattles in the bones like an earthquake, I have known the exhaustion that comes from carrying too much. But I have also known joy that defies explanation. I have known the sound of my grandmother’s hum as she stirred a pot on the stove, the way my uncle’s voice settled over me like a shield, the wild freedom of dancing with my friends on a summer night, the feeling of being part of something vast and unbreakable.

To be Black is to know a secret that the world cannot take from us. It is to know what it means to survive, to thrive, to transform suffering into something golden, something living, something that sings.

And so, I offer this poem. A song, a declaration, a party. A witness to the fact that no matter what this world does, no matter how it tries to make us doubt our own brilliance, I would be Black in every lifetime.

I WOULD BE BLACK IN EVERY LIFETIME

& if the Lord called me down to the waters,
if the sky split open & asked me, child, what will you be?
I would throw my hands up like Sunday morning,
like sweat on a tambourine,
like a grandmother rocking in a wooden chair
yes, Lawd.

I would be Black again.
Black like a Hallelujah! stomping through the pews,
Black like a baby girl twisting cornrows between her fingers,
Black like collards on the stove & Anita Baker spinning slow,
Black like laughter so full it shakes the walls.

Tell me, what else would I be?
What else but this?
What else but hips rolling to a bassline thick as honey?
What else but the wail of a saxophone calling somebody home?
What else but fire, but rhythm, but steel & shine & praise?

I would be Black like a neon sign buzzing on 125th street.
Black like a knuckle tapping dominos on a table.
Black like an old head hollering, Talk yo’ shit!
when Def Poetry be jammin’.
Black like a kitchen full of grease & gossip & aunties,
who are really your mother’s best friends from high school,
make sure you eat somethin’ baby you lookin’ skinny.

& when the world tries to snatch me from myself,
tries to tell me I should want something different,
should be something easier,
should bow my head & hush my tongue,
I will laugh the laugh of my people.
That deep belly laugh. That ain’t you tired yet? laugh.
That we still here laugh.
That go ‘head & try it if you want to laugh.

I would be Black in every lifetime,
in the beginning, in the end,
in the middle of a cookout
where somebody’s uncle two-steps offbeat
& don’t nobody care because the ribs is tender
& the cousins is singing & the Frankie Beverly and Maze is loud
& the sun is kissing us whole.

I would be Black, & I would be good, & I would be home.

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