Ariel K. Moniz

How The Black Woman Sells Herself

Take this skin—

it caught a lot of eyes, wasps to honey

stung enough that I never forgot

where the pain lived, how I slept

or did not sleep, in the sweet-bodied night.

Take these eyes—

they’ve seen what they can

and could not know if they were

drowning themselves or dying of thirst,

and couldn’t change a thing.

Take this flesh—

a meal for bigotry, a season of undoing,

a lifetime of being mid-city school district

and the Lord’s gospel, they’ll all say

it’s never enough or more than I need.

Take this heart—

it still beats around half-digested dreams,

it looms too large in this chest cavity

of headstones and names like graves,

it’s a call never answered or received.

Take them away—

if I must choose emptiness

let it come, let me be free.