Black Teenager

I see you looking at me
From a distance
As far away
As 10 years ago

You look at me like
I'm about to give you
All the easy answers
To all the hard questions you've been living

Like

"When is the money going to run out?"
"Will I ever fall in love
"Will my skin ever stop feeling like a curse?"
"Will I ever meet God again. If I do will He love me?"

More importantly -- will  I let him??

Like an oracle
I take 10 years of your time as an offering
Then answer you in riddles
I say things like the answers you're looking for
Can't be found or given
You can only live them.

The money will never run out because your family
Can't bear to say no to their firstborn blood
And sometimes that will comfort you
Most times it will eat you alive.

You will fall in love and have your heartbroken
So thoroughly that all the love you thought
You didn't have will spill out of you in a red tide
Onto a dirty mattress in a small, 2-bedroom house
you are trapped inside

You will dress that wound
In your Sunday best
Walking with your head held high
Not cause of your pride
But cause you're afraid to look down
And just like that
Just like a curse manifesting in the moonlight

God will peer through your window
Ask you where you've been hiding this whole time
And you will say
In this skin so dark you couldn't see me in broad daylight

And he will laugh
The sound of God laughing is you waking up at 6:00am
When three hours earlier you couldn't even imagine still being here

You'll ask him where's been this whole time
And he'll ask if you'd like for him to take you there
And you'll say yes
When you arrive you will see the pearls and know where you are
Realize you were never too concerned with meeting God again
You just wanted to know where he live
To see where he wakes up at 6AM
You will call it heaven -- a place where you can love all the people you couldn't on Earth
And you will call it good.