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My body is
perfect and
imperfect and
Black and
girl and
big and
thick hair and
short legs and
scraped knee and
healed scar and
heart beating and
hands that hold and
voice that bellows and
feet that dance and
arms that embrace and
my momma’s eyes and
my daddy’s smile and
my grandma’s hope and
my body is masterpiece and
my body is mine.
From Watch Us Rise (Bloomsbury, 2019). Copyright © 2019 by Renée Watson. Reprinted by permission of the author.
This Body
SKIN: NOUN
1. Sensitive. Dry
See Dove soap, Oil of Olay, shea butter.
See middle school pimples plumping up
the night before picture day.
Always on the chin or nose.
The brutal abduction and murder of 14-year-old
African American Emmett Till
in Mississippi on August 28, 1955,
galvanized the emerging Civil Rights Movement.
Martin Luther King, Jr. called his murder
“one of the most brutal and inhumane crimes
of the 20th century.” –Biography
Our Black bodies, sacred.
Our Black bodies, holy.
Our bodies, our own.
Every smile a protest.
Every laugh a miracle.