Black Heaven (inspired by Danez Smith)

Somewhere, a place that isn’t here, Black angels

carve themselves into stained glass. Do back flips

 

over break beats, and freeze

time in an instant.

 

Lift their hands in praise, with no fear of looking like guns.

Black boys pick flowers

by the garden. Sweet singing like Sunday choirs. No longer worry

if the streetlights come on.

 

Brown girls are draped in clouds and jump rope on golden concrete.

They wrap their afros up like halos and dance with the Sun.

Last night, I hid

my voice somewhere in the back of the moon,

Didn’t care if I had lost it.

 

Last night, I spread my skin atop the mantle to air out. Never knew

that my body could be something worth admiring. Last night,

I took my dreams

upstream. Sat them by the river, and watched them drown.

 

Do you know how it feels to be here and unseen?  

Do you know what it’s like to say goodbye to

a friend before you’ve said hello? Do you know what hell

we’ve been through to deserve this paradise?

 

When I was alive, I didn’t have that luxury. My mouth was a trigger.

My voice, the gunsmoke. But here, in this drunken abyss,

I decided to be God

over man.

 

Spoke myself into existence

 

Wrote my killer’s name on the bathroom mirror; America

Does it matter if it’s a dream if it feels this good? Heaven

is just a forever where there is no such thing as bye.

 

It’s going to the store and getting to come back.

It’s playing your favorite song

in your car as loud as you want.

Not watching your childhood sink away

into the Mississippi.

 

I don’t know where I was before, But I know I’m about 100 miles

north of somewhere better than I used to be.

 

They said we’d have to die to get to heaven.

I didn’t believe them. I lay atop it all, stuck.

Like streetlights on black skin.

Like angels, carved into stained glass.