Glenn Taylor

DAMAGE / CONTROL

What I wouldn’t trade to be able to produce
white tears on command, to match white fears

drop for drop, bathe in the hyperbolic—I’m sorry,
but let me carve out a niche in your market.

It’s hard to mistake my Blackness & all that
comes with it, beyond your thoughts & prayers

& showy public displays that flick off
like a light switch. Consider this ever-present

weight, empathy fed on like bacteria. My white
knuckling read as ashyness, the years of built-up

stress breaking my body. Recall the last time
you were the only & othered, self-preserved

in an unfamiliar city. This history of might
could happen repeatable, the center of self

self-centered. It shouldn’t surprise me that
it still surprises you that I can be just as afraid

when I walk alone, when I see people stare
& reach, fidget, that I, too, can pore over details

in the supposed routine, guilty by convenience
store whistles, never given the chance to pick out

my own headshot for media consumption through
slow-paced sepia nostalgia. All it takes for me is

to grace a halo, a brush treated as a mid-air collision,
that it’s hard to picture yourself in my shoes, because

you don’t want to believe I wear shoes in the first place.