The Freedom Fighter
By Imara Vaughn
I fell in love with her deepness,
Fell in love with the wonderful waves of her mind and how they would wane and crest best at the height of the moon
When her visions of rest were interrupted by her dreams and her dreams, interrupted by her nightmares,
Dreams that one day she would be able to save all of the little lost boys whose Neverland had become small dark cells and steel bars and yards lined by high barbed fences
And little girls whose testimonies were drowned out by questions of her character as if short pleated skirts were consensual agreements,
Dreams drowned out by the nightmares that in my attempt, I mean her attempts to save the oppressed, marginalized, underrepresented, felons, gays, poor
That she’d be victorious in the many battles of an unwinnable war,
But I will fight anyway, I mean she will fight anyway, I mean we will fight anyway
Because everybody suffers when a nation won’t come to terms with its wounds,
And we hold them deep dark secrets, them seemingly unhealable wounds,
Them marijuana leaves turned to bandaids, Hennessy filled medicine spoons type wounds,
Like Solange would say, this is not the kind of pain that you can smoke and drink away,
So I will fight, anyway,
Just as I fought against the paradigm of teenage pregnancy and miseducation,
Just as I fought against every sexist ideology that viewed the worth of my brain and my heart as less than my breast and my hips,
That didn’t comprehend what I was saying, trying to read the curves of my lips,
Like a drunken sailor, I’d have you hung over from my words and after just a few sips
Cause you thought my ass could stop cars but didn’t know my mind could sink ships.
