Photo by De’Andre Bush on Unsplash

OnceIWasaBlackGirl

Myla Grier
4 min readMar 1, 2021

Once I was a little black girl

Swinging in a tree asking my self,

Why doesn’t everybody recognize

How special it is to be me?

Why do I tame my hair?

Modify my speech

Altering the natural free ways of being

An ethnically charged princess

Soon to be queen of the Diaspora

Impending a sense of dread

Whenever my appearance is made —

What the heck is the matter with these people?

Don’t they realize I’m no danger to an ill society?

Already twisted and bent by its own ideology

Nonsensical beliefs

Idiosyncratic phrases

Oxymoronically placed

A contradiction of words

Blocked out by semantics waiting to be heard

By people who believe American is a language?

I swung on that tree

And looked up at the rope which held my tire and wondered

Why it was once called a noose,

Wondering why people who purported to be

“One nation under God, indivisible”

Could pretend He was invisible

As they used a stalwart oak

To choke

squeeze, eke

The life out of somebody’s father, brother, husband or son

As if nearby weeping willows cried for no reason

False accusations

Lame excuses

In the name of justice

Reasonable doubt

Three-fifths of a man

IS THAT WHY IT WAS ALLOWED?

Is that why my people never RSVP’d to the lynching party?

Now that I’m older it is not hard for me to understand

Why my man gets upset at every reprimand

Somebody always on his back

Watching his every move.

Myla Grier

Myla is the author of God’s Daughter, an inspirational text for survivors of abuse. https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Daughter-Myla-Jones/dp/0982795408