
The prompt: Write a List Poem; June’s Day 1 of 5
My list came from various notes I’ve taken in response to the ways I live as a Black woman:
- Adjust to make you more comfortable
- Choose a gentler phrase
- Smile to mask anger
- De-center my voice from our conversation
- Wait to see if you will move over
- Move over first because you never do
- Search online for images like me that I won’t find
- Close windows to quiet your hatred
- Wipe mirrors to see myself loved
- Carry emotional weight I didn’t choose
- Disrupt texts that violate me and my students
- Stand proudly in intersections and margins where I live
- Highlight abolitionist teaching strategies
- Console a student who has fear for our lives
- Call my sisterfriends who protest and speak up
- Celebrate Black Joy
- Pray for my son because he shows his feelings
- Pray for my daughter because she doesn’t
- Laugh and cry because I’m here
- Add to my list called Anti-Black Racist Work
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