Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 74450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
“…Yeah.” He closed the book and tossed it on the coffee table.
“Because of your mother, right?”
He offered a nod, and she covered his hand with hers. She gave it a good squeeze, three times, like Mrs. Florence used to do. She always did it in threes when they’d have a heart-to-heart. A chill went up his spine.
“Suicide hurts people. It’s a cowardly move in my book because it doesn’t consider the pain others are caused by it.”
“Wanting everything to end is not always a cowardly move. Wanting to die has so many reasons. I wasn’t afraid of death then and I’m not now because I don’t believe in death.”
“You don’t believe in death? Death is absolute, Azure.”
“It is, but it’s also a transition. There is no ending, only a continuation. Energy never dies. Love is energy. Love never dies, either. Once it’s created and born into the world, it exists forever. It can change forms, morph, shrink, expand, or transfer to someone or something else. Suicide is not the absence of love for others; it’s the absence of love for ourselves.” He glimpsed into the dark abyss of her eyes and wanted to stay there. To shrink himself and swim in her gaze. “It’s because we’re at war with ourselves. It’s based in fear but not cowardice, and that’s what a lot of folks don’t understand. Cowardice is weakness. Fear can be healthy or unhealthy.
“I stand proudly in my past. The bleeding, ugly cuts, the blue bruises, the concussions to my ego and sense of self. I stand firm in the present, lookin’ forward to tomorrow. I am my own future. Ain’t nothin’ in this world stopping me but me. I thought, for a fleeting second, that I wanted to die because I let others make me believe I wasn’t good enough, bein’ me. A Black girl in a mostly White school. Some days it was hell. I was different in so many ways… and I’m dark. People notice me and my beauty makes them uncomfortable. I can speak without sayin’ a word. I speak no evil.”
“Do you remember when you called me on the phone after ghosting me, and recited poetry?” he asked.
“Yes, but I didn’t recite that. It was just off the top of my head.”
“Okay, good enough. I want you to talk to me. Right now. In poetry.”
She plucked her cigar from the ashtray, took a drag and placed it back down, smiling.
“…Like black roses crushed against black sapphire, sable, and opals… I’m black like black sand, in a black-on-black land. I’m black like obsidian, and all of this luscious melanin made me feel ugly in a show-white world. Show-white… not snow-white, because one’s paleness became a show. Skin color became some sort of invisible hero. Somethin’ to hold over my black tiara of curls. That sort of thing can really mess with a girl… My kinks grew out, instead of down. Black crown. Royal, with charcoal wings. The black stripes of a bumble bee was me, with one hell of a sting…
“Slit wrists don’t mean shit, if nobody is there to care if you bleed.
“Black jasper, with her master blaster, shootin’ black shots into the galaxy.
“I’m black like black rice and black like undiluted coffee
“I’m black like the inside of a lion’s mouth, but sometimes, sweet as toffee.
“I’m black like blackberries, black pepper, and flavorful black beans.
“My soul is delicious, and my brain greased, my mind is such an enchanted tease.
“I make men weak at the knees, and women want to be me.
“Because I’m blacker than sweet dreams, covered in peaches in cream.
“Death isn’t blackness. ’Cause blackness is life.
“That’s why with the stroke of my paintbrush, I cut pain like a knife.
“Slidin’ across the thin wrist of a girl who ain’t know no better.
“I was damn smart, but not very clever.
“What if I told you that you should walk into the blackness and find your mama?
“Something is inside of you, feasting on that trauma.
“You have one of two choices. And a path, a way out, is what you must carve.
“Feed the trauma. Or make that mothafucka starve.
“You can blame it on a teacher that tried to show you the way.
“You can blame it on a yard sale, which led to one fateful day.
“You can blame it on your whiteness, fatherlessness, your poverty as a child.
“You can blame it on your façade. Your quietness. But deep inside, you’re wild.
“You look at me with the bluest eyes, somethin’ like Toni Morrison’s book.
“I dare to turn my back on you, I must have another look.
“I am the blackness… so somewhere inside of me, I know what you do when you think ain’t nobody lookin’.
“You got a treasure trove of secrets, a cauldron of ideas… that brain of yours is always cookin’.
“I’ve known you from somewhere, our souls met long ago.