I would like to exchange my tough skin for your fragile one.

Your skin comes with a ‘handle with care’ sticker.

All that they can’t place on you they’ve placed on me,

Apparently.

This skin, chipped up carvings

Like the cravings overtook them

Like hungry fingers turned knives as they scraped my disguise, my dark layer of skin

Just to taste it

To test whatever we call that strong stuff that sits so firmly within.

To make an example of me

They mark me

With titles

Like nicknames that were never meant to dismantle my smile for my daughter who might inherit these labels because her eyes won’t allow her to cry as your little girls do:

Titles like

Durable, resilient, sturdy

Strong

Strong

Strong

On every corner and curve

There is no patch on this skin that has not served to support somebody who is not me.

I have heard them wonder at my strength

And discern that I am

Probably just built for this

I have learned to pretend I can’t hear because I will probably develop mental illness

Trying to make sense of this

Coded language writ on my skin in

Unfamiliar black ink

In language only I wasn’t meant to read

And I believe it says something like

Strong Black Woman

Cannot be broken. Tear ducts unused, unopened.

Strong Black Woman

Whose identity is no secret

We do not praise her

She does not need it

She is so strong.

So strongly opposed to this image used to dismiss her moments of break down.

Can she- is she allowed to not be so strong?