I struggle with everything left inside me that’s human because I live among vultures who fancy me strange fruit ripe for the picking.

I love and it is not returned. I cry and am not comforted. I shriek and I am not heard. They claim my language is baser (impatient, unrealistic) grunting and cannot be understood, or respected, nor my wants acted upon. They tell me I’m no person.

But my fiery anger, dark rhythm and scholarly intellect piques their interest and is ripped up, fashioned like a dress, or put on repeat on the radio, slapped onto a menu at a great fusion restaurant in Philly by the yuppie head cook to be eaten by Kops, Kommon citizens, all Killers.

You become gluttonous on the hacked pieces of me you find desirable and cast out what you do not think appealing and cannot chew, like cud. You tell me who I am, how I taste, what you prefer, how I am best prepared, quietly, softly, with no burn or bite, dead. Sectioned and quartered and sold and swallowed.

There are no flowers that convey the madness of our slaughter, there are no flowers drenched in enough blood, there are no flowers, there are no flowers. I look at a map of this country and instead of sweetly planning places to visit, I franticly plot places to run and hide, and I see nothing but terror as the page turns red, as they’re using it to pack the meat.

I am so many things, at this point nearly resigned to my spot in line to the slaughter. Just cattle, just cattle.

I want to be felt and yet I know you don’t. If you did, you’d understand my urgency. It would burn in you like it does me. It would anger you. You’d love me, you’d comfort me, you’d let me scream and cry, you’d end my need to do so. You’d see how sorely my people deserve to be free.