(2nd iteration of Breakthrough)
In this home that is drenched in pain and suffering.
Where the land we walk on leave the bottom of our shoes rotten by the blood that was shed.
Walking on the remains of dead fruit that Eve decided to indulge in.
Did she know that her hands would be the same ones that would tie the nooses around our necks, handle the whip across our backs, hold the glock that would take her sons and daughters’ life?
Maybe she would have thought twice, if she would’ve seen our ancestors throwing themselves over board because they believed that life after death would have been so much more than this.
It seems to me that pain follows the scents of dark chocolate.
They must sense me as sweet.
And while, “sweet” is usually a word I take delight in This aint the same taste I have after I eat a large meal and I need something “sweet”
It’s a sweetness that knows that the fruit that God created was intended to satisfy my every need,
But Eve disobeyed, and now that sweetness that left her licking the tips of her fingers is the sweetness that I just can’t stand, that keeps me awake at night, that keeps me from doing right.
Why does it feel like this weight that hovers of the back of me is called Blackness?
But in spirit-u-ality it is called sin.
Ain’t it crazy that the world got us thinking that our melanated deliciousness was God’s mistake?
Sin re-writes history books because it knows when it does wrong.
Back then, when I was sitting in my middle school classroom reading words from Langston Hughes about how: “I’ll be at the table When company comes.”
Finally, having a seat at the table.
Not realizing God has already prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies
That He anointed my head with oil and my cup runneth over
Sin must not have known that surely Goodness and Mercy will follow me all the days of my life
And I that I will dwell in the house of the Lord, Forever
And even if sin did know, even if Eve did know what the consequences would be
The Lord still would have been there protecting me,
Still holding me up so that I won’t even hurt my foot on a stone,
And promising me that even if my heel got bruised that I would crush the serpents head,
This is what allows me to live, To be,
To focus on the one who painted me hickory sweet,
Sweet like the pie made on holidays or the sound of Anita Baker on cleaning day,
I realize that I was made for a purpose,
That my dark skin, that my dreadful history, maybe a part of my make-up, but will never be the end of my story,
Amen.