if anyone asks

By Maryam Azeeza Muhammad (she/her)

if anyone asks,

yes. i’m plenty tired and mostly defeated.

carrying on feels difficult.

i am inside the body of a burned out Black woman

who no longer wishes to love.

and yearns to yearn solitude.

i don’t feel like being reasonable anymore.

i don’t feel like being the bigger person.

so many get to be bitter and set in their ways—

when will it be my turn?

so many get to hold on to bad habits and dispositions,

but i always have to rise above my situation;

and the double standard makes my skin crawl.

if anyone asks,

yes. my eyes were bigger than my stomach my entire life,

and now i’m in the mood to starve.

i am tired of searching for things unseen

and unproven to be real (at least to me).

it’s a burden on your shoulders to hope that

one day you’ll wake up from what you think may be a coma.

it’s unmotivating to the spirit to be unable to rest

and find yourself awake at 4:00 in the morning,

searching for answers that you don’t even have the questions to.

if anyone asks,

yes. i often mourn the living as members of

the dearly departed more than those who are deceased

because the dead most of the time didn’t decide to perish

but many who still live now woke up one day,

and chose to be dead to me.

Maryam Azeeza Muhammad (she/her) is a poet and womanist from Bridgeport, CT. She is currently majoring in Journalism and minoring in Africology at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.