How I feel right now? Sharp pain/How I felt yesterday? Pain not as sharp but dull just as maddening to extract/How can I tell if I can’t see the wound? I am an academic. I study race, Jim Crow got wings and pseudopods I know its flapping in my belly, I know its squirming/How do I cope? I don’t, I wait for something that looks like a tongue blooming and I water it/How do you say that another way? I look for fire in the eyes of hurt and pray it becomes a superpower/How can you control the flame? That’s the point, I am looking for a loss of control/Do you think that will numb your pain?/ Do you think that will solve the problem? When has solving the problem been a solution. Like racism isn’t an equation there is no equilibrium. I can’t give racism back all it has given me/What has it given you? A gun mouth, a hair trigger, a bed of trippy nerves I sometimes call my body, blood for air, gills that only work one death at a time. Water as place to sit still and bury/Is that all? No, just all I can carry. There are tomes; microaggressions so plentiful you could lose yourself in the harvest if you open us up/Who is us? A wave peaking/Who is you? You is interrogative, You leaves riches of prescribed skin and digs up risk/What is there to lose? Height, Weight, Dimension, all that has bloated a phenotype/What is there to gain? Blood, thickness of vein, more people fit in You.