This Place Changes Me

“Go through. Don’t turn off. Take it over. Don’t drop out. Change it. … Make your own life-preserving community” – June Jordan, Ocean Hill Brownsville H.S. Graduation Speech, 1970

This place changes me. I am bitter. Reproachful. Irritable, meaner. My temper is quicker and my patience is slower. 

It corrupts me. 

I have never been inherently distrustful of white folks. But there’s something about this place.

In this place where their smiles never meet their eyes, where kindness is performed and never extended.

This place changes me. 

I have hated in my life. I’ve hated others from lack and jealousy, I’ve hated lovers for leaving, I’ve hated the stagnation I fell into.

I’ve hated myself.

This isn’t that.

But this place changes me… It inspires a different kind of hatred, but that may not be the word. Maybe it is, but the object is not a who, it’s an amorphous what. What? Why? For how long?

It feels all-consuming. It feels too big to chew and I can’t swallow it. My jaws are tired and I cannot swallow it. Something won’t let me metabolize this place. I keep my head down and do my work but this place changes me. 

I don’t struggle with depression, but…

But… 

But.

I might have a case of the blues. It’s not quite seasonal; it’s regional. 

This place changes me. 

So I don’t know how to go through when this isn’t me. When I know she isn’t here anymore.

I don’t know how not to turn off when I’m overheating.

I want to go through, but I can’t move. 

I watch my shadow self with uncertain eyes 

She retreats. 

She diminishes. 

I watch us wither away into this definitive, defeated nothing. 

We scream and no one hears. 

We weep and no one wonders 

We disappear, and no one misses us. 

How can I choose to be nothing,

knowing all that I am?

I hide my multitudes because they are not safe here.

I am changed and I don’t want to be.