Wouldn't You Be Tired Too?

O Black Woman,

You are tired... Who can blame you?

You do so much alone.

Do you notice how you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders?

The men you have around you arent making life easier either—in fact they are a part of your burden aren’t they?

As if it’s not challenging enough to think for yourself, you find yourself thinking for them too. Troubleshooting for your life and those around you…

Life is life-ing but how much more does life life when it’s not just your life life-ing.

Wouldn’t you be tired too?

You’ve been picking up the slack for a lifetime it seems.

Most of us not having two parents present, we did the heavy lifting for ourselves and as if that wasn’t painful enough, we did it for the siblings before and after us too.

You became a parent once you could follow instructions, I bet you wish you didn’t know how to listen.

Caught in between the rock and the hard place of the only time you’ll feel seen, you knew you had to serve to be seen.

Wouldn't you be tired too?

O Black woman, you never had a chance to rest, because even when you leave home to forge your own, you now bare the burden of doing it all alone.

The men around don’t lift a finger to take away the pain.

Some have added to it.

More fire to forge you into a strong black woman, huh?

Oh how nice would it be to exhale and shut down for a while. How nice would it be to have someone to take the baton from your weary hands.

Why wouldn’t you be tired?

How much more could you do if you got a chance to rest from what you’ve done.

How sweet would it be to turn off the mind that’s always racing to find a solution, a path out.

Maybe this is why they think we’re angry?

Anger is a secondary emotion.

What lays atop it truly is sadness that went silenced and ignored.

What lays atop it is the lack of rest from always being on.

What lays atop it is the feeling of betrayal— we came into a world where we were not catered to but taught to cater to….

Wouldn’t you be angry too?