IN(DI)VISIBLE
by Alfreda Henry
You don’t see me
Even wearing the loudest red
Hands held high over my head
For me Freedom isn’t free
It just a word being said
The “American Dream”
It lies rotting on the vine
While Black Mothers screams
Echo through time
My skin color a major crime
You don’t see me
Spread eagle in the position
Just a forum for some politician
Until Election Day
When they find new ways
To make me pay
Telling me to wait for the
promise land
While my sons are dying by your
hand
You don’t see me
For you we’re all the same
Just branded with a different
name
Discounting my life’s experience
Reframing my subsistence
Into more than just existence
That you say I don’t deserve
But I have some nerve
You don’t see me
Laying the blame at my door
Without examining the core
Claiming not to start the war
All the while picking the scab
from the sore
Bandage,? You don’t see the need
Lie there and bleed
You don’t see me.
My struggles minimize
Down to an edible size
I wage a protest
You’re shocked as if I jest
You insist that everything’s
great
When we all see it’s cut rate
You don’t see me
Until your accounts bleed red
It affects your bottom line
Your children aren’t being fed
Then you take the time
To turn in my direction
Finally, finally, finally
You see the mass infection
But you blink and it’s gone
And I am Black being wrong
Cause you don’t see me.
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