For Colored Girls (Juanita Sims)
Ever since I realized, there was someone called a colored girl or an evil woman, a bitch or a nag I been trying not to be that and leave bitterness in somebody else’s cup. Come to somebody to love me without deep and nasty smelling scars from lye or being left screaming in a street of lunatics whispering, ‘Slut, bitch, bitch. Nigga, get out of here with all of that.’ I didn’t have any of that for you. I brought you what joy I found. And I found joy. And then there’s that woman who hurt you. And who you left three or four times. And then you went back after you put my heart in the bottom of your shoe. You just walked back to where you hurt and I didn’t have nothing. So I went to where somebody had something for me, but none of them were you. I got a real dead loving here for you now, ’cause I don’t know anymore how to avoid my own face wet with my tears because I had convinced myself that colored girls have no right to sorrow. I lived for you. I know I did it for myself, but I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand being sorry and colored at the same time. It’s so redundant in the modern world.