When you
hear that
10 children
will be slaughtered
brutally
unfairly
prematurely
at 10 AM today,
you walk out
for 17 minutes
of silence
to pay your dues.
To think about
how they'll never
get to live life
like you.

When you
hear that
girls around
the world
will be denied
their rights to
their
education
to marry for love
to follow their dreams,
you start
studying even harder
for the girls
that can't.
It horrifies you
that they'll never
sit in a classroom
and read
and write
and learn
and experience.

When you
hear that
black people
are being criticized
for embracing
their natural hair,
you show up to school
with your natural hair
radiating around
your head like a
kinky crown.
You let your friends
touch it, maybe tell
them about the way
that black girls
had to conform
to other expectations
of what beauty was.

When you
hear that
you're going
to be in trouble
if you
dare break
the barriers
so clearly marked
for people like you,
that you can't
walk out
to protest,
you say okay.

There are
other ways.
You connect with
girls to send a message:
you're not giving up.
You write
poems
papers
speeches
about the topic
of equality
feminism
black girl magic.

You write and write
in hopes of starting
some kind of revolution.