Deforestation isn’t just the cutting down of trees.
It’s the cutting down of black women’s self esteem.
It’s when you turn us into pretty furniture to sit on.
Make textbooks out of our bodies
And then use our broken spines to bind them
It’s when you pull us out of the earth
We were so lovingly planted in
By the roots of our natural hair
And condition not only our minds
But our curls into believing
We are not meant to be here.
See I’d like to think of Black Women
As trees
I’d like to think of us as brown leaves
Instead of green
I mean weren’t chlorophyll and melanin
Created to do the same thing?
Which is to absorb light?
Therefore we must be photosynthetic beings
Because our entire existence
Is the process of photosynthesis.
We’ve taught ourselves how to
Combine the carbon dioxide of racism, sexism, slut shaming and whorenaming,
Combined it with the H2O of our tears and created glucose and oxygen.
No, you created more than glucose and oxygen.
You created brown sugar,
Sweet, decadent, delicious
Like dark chocolate.
You are the essence of excellence.
****
[Courtesy of the author]
Link to the Italian translation