hey Maya... the caged bird isn’t singing to be a black woman in this country is to be fetishized and ignored do they know the energy it takes to pretend not to see me, hear me collecting and documenting through the corners of a side eye to pretend they don’t hear me singing in this fucking cage i mean, screaming— our pain is also gentrified constantly held down poked and prodded enslaved rebranded as a caged bird Maya, i never sang that song i know my ancestors were just trying to survive but i have no desire to sing chattel songs feminism is still capitalism because white women still don’t get it treating us like the childhood friend their father touched instead of them, thanks, sis tired of my truths falling on deaf ears to be a black woman is to be held down on top of the white man’s secret the Symptom Child that no one believes in even amid chaos, folx would rather double down than call their fathers a rapist or a pedophile and they call us liars, thieves, master manipulators… foundational black american women have been framed to carry the secrets of white men, then to be named after them it feels like we’re all sitting at the same dinner table trying to chew through the tension and resentment —like black women didn’t populate this whole fucking country, unconsentually like the sunburn on my shoulders every July has nothing to do with their forefathers the only power in white power is the guilt i do not wish to be freed from this cage i want to see it burned to the ground the same ground my ancestors bled into i will watch it burn like the spirits who watched the embers rise from the Nottoway Plantation i will not watch my redemption from the heavens Maya, there isn’t a song left to sing i do not wish to make this hell enjoyable i do not wish to survive this reality i will kill my ego again and again walk into the fire as the masked men close in i will liberate myself my sovereignty is in the new world no person, place, or thing has dominion over me and so it is