Hamilton tells us that that freedom rang
when the world turned upside down
the unraveling of the Continental Union Flag over Yorktown
It's been 248 years
But mere six days since the world turned right side up
wake, devise, intervene, reassess, plan, sleep
the familiar meditation of the preparation of my tools
and cut off the flow of contradicting emotions
that tell me that no one is a true villain
because the veracity of that statement is found wanting
in the light of the guilt of complacency
I teach my students
skills I practiced in the dark
surrounded by victims burned free of their protections
and identities, the thing they present to the world-
their very faces–
I carry these lessons deep in my heart
how the world ignites you
to burn in your passion
that requires consumption
of the wick that is you
and how to fight to keep it from destroying them
as I train my students
not knowing if the child I am guiding
is one of us or one of them
Child
I say as these pale faces with flaxen hair follow in
the wake of a woman who walks like a man
and wears the skin of a colored person in White America
I am the only woman of color on this floor, manned by
well meaning white women like the ones who birthed and raised you
and chose to protect you and preserve your life
in a stability purchased on the backs of people like me
unable to comprehend that the warm home they made
is with a person who walks with the spine of
an angry, old, white man
in a state inhabited by angry, old, white men
taught in schools led by
well meaning white women supporting angry, old, white men
what chance does a children’s book on diversity and inclusion
have when your indoctrination in white supremacy
started in your crib and you grew up staring at your own pale image
because the price of change was the loss of comfort
Only people who were born into nothing but persecution
and a life of being knifed by racist daggers in the shapes of tongues
can understand
and yet I am here teaching yet another white child in the futile hope
that maybe–just maybe this one might choose something other than
their own self interests
Listen to me child
I sing this dirge that has bled my throat for as long as I remember
this is what to expect--train wrecks and no support
this is what will come for you–
the system
the administration
the grief of the people around you
making them mad and blind with rage
and the ambivalence of those who went in with short white jackets
even those who first donned their role
with idealism and hope and goodness in their hearts
who have been pushed beyond their limits
with their morals so assaulted
by sleep deprivation
and humiliation
emotional excoriation
their spirit has given up
until they become the thing that they swore
as my friend
to fight against
before they turned their back on me
How dark a shadow the Ivory Tower you inhabit casts!
You cannot see
your good intentions build this dark city
the perpetuation and persisting horrors
are possible only through your complicity
I should have known
to heed the grief and resignation in Black women’s eyes
when they looked at me looking up at the white savior
believing that it would be different
because they loved me
as my darker sisters sat in heartbreak waiting for me
to learn this lesson
proximity to whiteness is unlikely to save you
people must be personally affected to take up your mantle
because no matter how many times they
claim to speak out
in the end Martin Niemöler
was right
Cowardice is woven into our DNA
to undo that from ourselves
is to undo yourself
and few are the ones willing
to end their lines so that others can continue
when the ones who sacrifice
are the ones that we need to make babies
and to raise the next generation of warriors
the altruistic are the ones weeded out of our species
this is why we will never win
so please, child–my child–
I have none of my own
therefore, I must adopt you
and hope that my words and my nurturing will change you
against your worse nature into one better
you must not be lost in the undertow of this despair
no matter how tired you are
you must guard yourself as a potential weak link
and reinforce yourself against indoctrination
the inculcation
of a world whose shades of gray
make it easy to slide from white to black
in little steps of
I don’t know
and
this is just how it is
and
they won’t let me
and
I am trapped
and
alone
and
powerless
and I must protect my own interests
as much as you resist the urge to drown under the skin of overwhelming odds
Know every heartbeat that passes is a pounding declaration of noncompliance
Little white girl wearing that stethoscope and a badge of nursing student
resist the urge to be swept into that comfort of
I don’t know
It’s not my idea
It’s above my paygrade
Let my voice be the one in your ear when you walk through these halls
like your Asian Aibileen Clark
raising you to the mantra
you is kind
you is smart
you is important
Except I say
you are powerful inherently because of your skin
therefore be responsible
It is not enough to be kind and gentle and nurturing and your idea of safe
there is no safe harbor in an open field of battle
that is what your mothers did not realize
Don’t forget what your true calling is:
to fight the world order means
that though you were born in a penthouse,
received into warm, dry comforters
while we were soaking in the deluge
your job is to set your house on fire
so that we are all wet when it rains
so that we are all desperate and equal
so that your people will feel the urgency of my people
because no one is moved to fight with a full belly and a warm bed
The privileged will tell you to be human is to feel and to mourn and to grieve
and to taste the life you’re living because
even the most active front-line activists need a break to rejuvenate
and that mentality makes me want to scream
Do you understand that I cannot shed my skin?
I cannot peel it off and set it to the side and take a vacation from racism
that is not an option for me
that is your privilege speaking
Resting after burnout is a concept only viable for people who have a place to rest
whose lives have the option of recovery
but it is not that for people who eat and drink and breath
a world full of discrimination against their being
We eat standing
drink water looking for danger on the horizon
sleep restlessly, in shifts to keep each other safe
There is no reprieve
That is what it is to be a queer colored woman in America
Look at the suffering of those who are weaker and more vulnerable
alone in dark rooms
who have learned that their cries and their protests and their inherent human rights
have never been acknowledged or respected
by the people who look like you and dress in the same uniform as you
and speak the same language as you, move like you, think like you
so that when I arrive the melanin in my face
and the fidelity of my actions is what lets them rest
If you wish to champion the dying black woman
the trapped latin child
the tortured asian teen
the raped indigenous one
the invisible disabled man
the murdered nonbinary person
Your mere existence must become a resistance
Every breath of you
must be a fight against the apathy
Roll up yours sleeves and come in to the bloody churned mud
Yes it reeks of rot of decaying cells of the uterine lining of
women who have ripped their embryos from inside themselves
and pull your loadbearing beams out from under the roofs
to prove that a world of unbigoted, generous, and sweet white babies
allying with our dark skinned ones
is worth your undoing to rectify things
Someone must make the sacrifice
and so far I am the one who has paid the price
My nails are never clean anymore
My sleep is full of nightmares
If you really want to make a difference
come into this hellscape
with your mouthguard in place
and your sleeves rolled up
I will place a gorget about your neck
so your warm breath can be formed into a scream
your protestations of injustices until
everyone stares and those who will refuse you
are humiliated and forced by the sense of embarrassment
and vexation from your aggravation
to give you what you need to save your patient
that is what we need from you, White Women
Walk with me through these halls filled with despairing souls
and know the way you practice nursing
is the way you must practice living outside these walls
until habits become character and
character becomes destiny
because the world is sick and dying
and the people in here
are the same people walking out there
are the same people who live in your home
and sleep in your bed
Everything must be viewed through this inviolable truth
that the only path to harmony is for us
as a species to have the same goal
to move forward through the darkness
into the light of justice and
stewardship of the future
of these children who have been
entrusted into your care by the power invested in you
by the license that you carry
It is your duty to protect these lives
That is what it means to be a nurse
When they made use raise our right hands in our gowns and commencement caps
with our degrees in our hands
I did not repeat the words:
“With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work”
That is not your calling
I did not swear to
“abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous”
That is not the way
Do not speak the words
"I solemnly pledge myself before God
and in the presence of this assembly,
to pass my life in purity
and to practice my profession faithfully”
Understand that this profession of nursing was designed
by well meaning rich white conservative Christian women
the first and foremost western nurse–
the one they call mother to our field
was a closeted and repressed
queer person who
as a subjugated sex in this patriarchal society
then propagated racism in the oppression of Mary Seacole
this oath of nursing
is a vow to reinforce
White Supremacy
I stood with my mouth shut
and my arms at my sides
ignoring the glares of my instructors
I can learn from you without becoming you
I will not be your trick pony
your model minority
I would rather die–or even live in subjugation
than pledge allegiance to you
I am not your average preceptor
I was born unwanted in a country founded by
Religious extremists
that did not want my family because of the color of our skin
and the sounds of our mother tongue
I have lived my life as an infiltrator in these White spaces
I am here to tear down these beams and your assumptions
My child,
Do not follow me if you wish for a comfortable, long life
this world is determined to incinerate me
but I choose the time and place
I am here to burn bright and set fire to this kindling from the
Outrage of the minorities–we colored, queer intruders
into this institution through which I walk but do not partake
I will teach you the ways of the colonizers sciences
how to look like them
and think like them
but not be like them
this is what you prioritize:
triage airway (suction to open the airway)
breathing (oxygen and an ambu bag to go into the lungs)
circulation (IV tubing and supplies)
to keep the body alive
but do not forget the soul
this is what you prepare for--the absolute worst case scenario
this is what you search for--signs that shock are setting in and how to get ahead of it
this is what to suspect--that your patient, and your nation, is trying to die
this is what you must guard against:
the swing of the arc of justice bending back to the beginning
When your people ask in bewilderment
How did this happen?
Say to them
this is what happens when you wait
a year
a decade
a generation
a century
because your bedfellow says
I want to change
I am trying to change
but it will be slow
a glacier's pace is still interrupted
by global change
What value is your future work
to a person who will die today?
I feel the softness in my student fading with my words
as she whispers ‘that makes sense’
yet her faces is too malleable yet to categorize as
flint like mine
set to unleash the rage in the forge of today
just as all my recent dreams, and hope of a joyful life
the derealization of my furlough into the love
of a well-meaning white woman
fading with each day and every night of silence is another night
of my frail connection with hope fraying
until I am swallowed back into the reality of this body
I could not differentiate the anger I have towards her
with the anger that seethes within me at her kind
with the anger I have towards myself for giving in to delusions
until I realize that I realized
she was not the exception
the arc of our association cursed to become
a palindrome
just like the arc of justice
curves back to its start
in a different point in time
another example
of why I take no stock in dreams like Martin
they only earned him a bullet to the head
and if I’m going to die the same way
I won’t go peaceably
no I pull on my hood in the rain
and sublimate my pain and hopelessness
into violence against the thing that hurts
the people like me
it is the only path forward to some kind of change
in my small corner of the earth
My child if you join me, we can be two nurses
linked against the world
but even if you don’t
remember the queer colored woman who brought you up
and fought desperately until the day she died
because she had no interest in passing the work
to future generations
her only aim was to bring it to an end–
there is a value to the impatience of those of us
who feel the beating of mortality more acutely than you
if you wish to be an ally
you must abandon the practice of perpetual sacrifice for stabilization
of telling your colored friends to wait until you are comfortable
to hope that working the White Supremacist system from the inside
will bear fruit
that is why we failed!
there is nothing redeemable here
nothing to patch or revise
there is only the desperate task of colored people triaging our kind
until your kind wake up
put away the bonds you have for your families
and enact the violence necessary to end this system
My child, listen to my voice in your ear
the battle of our time requires you to change your paradigm
turn your world upside down
and burn it to the ground
