Black girl growing up
Black girl going to school
Black girl having hair
Black girl wanna be cool
Black girl confused
Black girl doesn’t know the rules.

Hol’ on

Black boy growing up
Black boy going to school
Black boy gets shot

Hol’ on. Run that back

Black boy growing up
Black boy going to school
Black boy not being a stereotype
Black boy gets A’s
Black boy has joy
Black boy shows joy
Black boy have friends
Black boy has home
Black boy goes home
Black boy gets shot

Hol’ on now. Change the narrative.

One child growing up
One child loves the life
One child has love
One child has school
One child has friends that look like them
One child goes to class
One child learns their history

One child lucky
One child has privilege

One child goes home….

One child has dinner
One child goes to desk and does homework
One child sleeps peacefully
One child wakes up to scholarships and is proud
One child goes to…

Let’s end it there
One child is white
Let’s backtrack to my narrative
To the black child

Black child wakes up
Black child breathes
Black child wants to live
Black child faces micro-aggression
Black child wants to be beautiful
Black child wants to be cool
Black child wants to be seen
Black child is beautiful
Black child is cool
Black child is not seen

Black child wants to live
Black child sees no opportunities
Black child is not lucky
Black child does not know their History
Black child does not know their story
Black child is deprived
Black child is struggling
Black child wants change
Black child wants mic
Black child is not heard
Black child is silenced
Black child in school, minimal representation
Black child wants representation,
You’ve heard the story before
Black child wants change, black child enter deputation.

My family,

Came here for a better life,

Came here from skies that smile back,

A sandy beach that tickles your feet.

Left their home to come to this life.

Canada.

Where 1/4 of our year is nested under grey skies.

Where the sun is drawn on more than the corner of the page,

They’ve learned to accept grey in the sky, and a sun not fully coloured in.

Everyone says my family is the friendliest on the street.

That we radiate West Indian hospitality.

So why frown when you have all that smile to serve?

All that brave face to show?

But when our brave faces broke,

We just get told,

What do you have to cry for, they can give us something to.

We are too blessed to be stressed like this,
“Fix your face,”

Like I wouldn’t have fixed it myself if I could.

Cause the clinical term for depression in my family, for people like me, for my community,
Is ‘complaining.’

Anxiety means you’re being paranoid.

Pain just means you need to pray harder.

Mental health is how elastic you can make your smile,

Stigma isn’t even a word in their dictionary.

So no matter the struggle, as long as it doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger,
So we have so many scars, but what does it mean if it’s healed over and still hurts on the inside?

So for people like us,

Who come from islands like us

We know so little of belonging,

Yet still,

We are the friendliest people on the street.

For anyone whose families came here for a better life,

When they tell us to not complain,

And that they can give us something to really cry about…

Remember why they came here…

Remember why they searched for a better life.

Remember that the search doesn’t have to stop with them.

I want more than just to learning to survive.

I want the sun to be drawn on more than the corner of the page.

Because I can accept grey in the sky,

But not on the inside.

When they say,

“You’re not alone,”

We feel like we’re the exception.

When they tell us

“It’s OK to not be OK,”

We take it out of context, and stay “not OK”

This is how it goes.

With the colour on my skin,

And the colours the world paints me in,

Got me trapped inside my cultural ties

It’s not that we run away from our problems.

We’ve just trained to run beside it.

I’ve been coached through the struggle olympics,

Of how much worse it could be, it could get,

And we should be thankful everyday we haven’t run into that yet ,

But this running is starting to feel more like sinking…

I want to slow down.

Feel every hand that is offered to me,

Make that call,

And feel something more than urgency,

Feel more than counting the minutes and blessings of my day,

Wishing for better ones like I don’t have a say.

Yes i am blessed,

But there are so many more out there for me,

Who am I block them?

So, when they say

“We’re not alone,”

“And it’s OK to not be OK”

I’ll take that for exactly what it means,

Not for how my culture, or the way the world tries to invalidate me.

Because I can feel everything I feel,

And live in the in-betweens of all these feelings,

And everything that hurts,

And still hope for more.

Contrary to popular belief,

If a tree falls in a forest,

The whole canopy leans in an ear

Did you know trees can talk?

Billions of living wires whispering

Are you okay Are you Okay Are you Okay

It’s protective,

to run a root through the soil beneath you

reaching for a living “I’m here” “I’’m with you”

Because alone is a dirt that will bury us

Leaving us poking through the earth for sunlight

But sometimes,

us humans,

even with all our thumbs connected

can’t manage to speak about the elephant in the room

because its trunk is a tree we are living in

I have a bird song for this kind of sadness

and no one is tweeting back

Trees talk to each other more than my family talks to me

I don’t know how to tell my friends that I am wilting, a cowering fern

I have crown shyness, too much noise in the foliage of a schoolyard

Calling into the hollow hardwood

becomes scrolling with my lips to my thumb

A blink,

a notification on silent,

I open the app with my eyes closed

Dad says, we don’t draw attention to the aphids burrowing through our family tree

We keep it closed in all the bark we have thickened, this brownness we armored

Sometimes I hear voices calling me to peel off a branch

Where are the voices telling us to hold on?

Where are the nutrients of someone singing us in from the rain?

We crave the grounding of an exhale,

the making of an easy breath,

for someone to sway in tandem with our silent plea

Ear to the ground I listen for them

Eyes tethered to the thought that tripped me

There is someone

someone who wants to whittle down the worry in your brain

rearrange the furniture,

pull up the floorboards,

shake out the rafters

rake the leaves and make some space

For you to be witnessed,

even just for a moment,

even just for a second to carve your initials into the bark, and say

I was here

and I was hurting

but it doesn’t have to be forever,

it can just be right now.

There are wires under this entire city,

a root system,

the dirt’s internet

Trees know when other trees are suffering,

all without sound,
all with a signal

A green ping,
a text saying,

“what’s on your mind?”

I am sending a signal saying

I need someone

I am sending it through the networks of me

Through my neurons

and my blood

and my roots

I am asking with all that I am – please tell me that I’m not alone

That it is okay to feel this way

That my brown skin means

if I stand in a forest

I’m accompanied by my ancestors,

They soil me to a solar system of belonging

Of being enough

All wanting me to tell my story, to stay, to grow

If a tree falls in a forest,

We are held by our networks

Even when we’re leaning off a bluff

Clinging to our roots

Falling trees aren’t gone,

aren’t broken,

aren’t lost

They keep talking,
keep living,

As long as there is someone to listen.