I spread black boy ghosts all over my toast. I drizzle them over my waffles. I use them to wash
down my breakfast. They help me pick out my clothes: no hoodies and no black skin if possible.
Black boy ghosts knot my hair into their old nooses. They wear them like
necklaces, and that’s how I remember them. What some consider disrespectful, I consider useful,
because if they’ll continue to find themselves haunting my dreams they might as well always fill
my days.
I listen to the stories of gangster black boys, of rapper black boys, of imma get out this hood
black boys, of sophisticated black boys, and none of it matters, because they’re all ghosts.
They’re all dead. You might think that all the black boy ghosts in my head are just boys because
that’s what I call them, but some are grown, but not grown up enough to die of natural causes. So,
to me they’re black boy ghosts. They are the sons of America’s bigotry, the fruit hanging on its
strange trees.
For their own reasons they crowd around me. They fill my head with stray bullets to remind me
I’m not bulletproof. They remind me it don’t matter what gender black you are, you can always
die for a color. You can always get choked up by your collar. Always get a knee on your neck,
get your house raided, get your back shot in 16 times, or 10. You can never loosen your noose
necklace.
When I say black boy ghosts haunt my dreams that is no metaphor, that is not poetry. It is me
waking up in the middle of the night from too many stories that are too alike, too many gunshots,
and too many ghosts. Like black is only worthy of fertilizing the dirt with its crimson. I would
tell black boy ghosts to leave me alone, but who else would ever remember them.
I’m sorry black boy ghosts:
1. For always calling you ghosts.
2. For remembering you as what you were instead of who you are.
3. For every lie placed on your back.
4. For writing a whole poem about how much you boys give me nightmares.
5. For crimson dirt.
6. But most of all I am sorry you’ll always feel that last memory, and how much it hurt to breathe
it out, then in, then nothing.