there is comfort in cages

I keep trying to write the revolutionary Black girl,

but every line I draft is a counterfeit passport

to a country I never bled for.

I’ve never run from riot shields.

Never tasted tear gas on my teeth.

Never risked my body like a fuse,

burning so something else could live.

What I have done:

lit candles and called it protest.

Made hashtags do the heavy lifting.

Taught lessons about “critical thinking”

while leaving out the only questions that matter.

Wrote about freedom

like it was a decoration 

instead of a muscle you tear and tear and tear

until it grows back stronger.

We love our paper revolutions.

Our safety pins and curated outrage.

We love the idea of ourselves as dangerous

while never risking the loss of a job

a check,

a life.

Don’t nod.

Don’t think this is only about me.

Look at your own soft hands.

Your scrolling thumb.

Your voice you keep saving

for a “better moment.”

How many times have you called cowardice caution?

How many times have you called distance perspective?

How many times have you let someone else’s child

stand between you and the bullet?

The revolutionary Black girl

doesn’t live in my mirror

and she probably doesn’t live in yours either.

She is out there—

hoarse, hunted,

braids swinging like whips through the wind,

while we write her into poems

like saints we never prayed to.

And yet here we are,

pressing our pens to the page,

trying to smuggle ourselves

into a struggle we never entered,

hoping that proximity to her fire

might pass for heat.

This poem is not hers.

It’s ours—a mirror we’ve polished with our own excuses,

a confession dressed up as art.

Read it, if you dare.

Then ask yourself why you’re still sitting down.