Black Man

I ache for a deeper kindness, gentleness, patience, and appreciation for the black man. For every version of him which exists. His vulnerability is wildly unseen by the external world, so achingly and tragically invisible, so rarely reflected back to him that perhaps he struggles to see it within himself, perhaps doubts its existence and his capacity to realize it.

Please, be kind to our black man. Encourage and support him openly, compliment him, tell him how intelligent and beautiful and resilient he is; melanin and thick hair and sometimes thick accent and strife and strength and perpetual external misunderstanding of his existence in this world. All wound up into a bloody, beating heart, keeping rhythm to some incomparable and breathtaking version of life, like yours and mine.

Be sweet to him. Tell and show him, please, reflect it back to him - we need his true version of vulnerability in this world desperately.

We need to witness black men’s vulnerability beyond what the news shows - a vulnerability to police brutality, jail time, and low income. Inside black men lies an infinite, unfolding world aching for appreciation, humanization, witnessing, dignity, and respect. Fuck if I’m not going to give it to them in this life.