FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK ON THE BLOCK

My parents kept me on the porch.

It was a right of passage. Baby brother had to wait his turn. Learn the ropes first, fall down, you know, scrape a knee.

My time, though, was coming. Whether I was ready or not.

And, truth is, I wasn’t ready. 

I got pushed off anyway. 

Time was up.

So, what was I gonna do? The good years were gone. Big brother had the benefit of a two parent home and the in-house guidance of our Father. 

I got shattered dinner plates, shrill screams and accusations to christen my puberty.

Time to suck that shit up, I guess. Time to get out and about and find out that ain’t no crying in the middle of the park when the kids gather round like a murder of crows creeping in for the kill. 

Either get pecked to death or molt the pin feathers which keep you from flying above the sharp stabs and jabs that hit hard when you just want to make a friend.

I wasn’t ready, though. I didn’t want to leave the comfort and familiarity, the shelter and safety that came from continuity.

I could have used a few more years. I could have gestated a while longer. There was more for me to consider. More to learn before being pushed out there on my own.

It’s not that I couldn’t adjust, dressed in the skin of the conditioned, the toughened little monsters scouring the streets for prey to eat; we all do what we must.

I just couldn’t shake the sense that this was senseless; unnecessarily cruel and purposefully hopeless. That this was a manufactured condition and that me and more like me were not meant to have access to such possibility.

Wrong caste, not always color, left me red-lined alongside the wrong side of the tracks, scrabbling to get out, scratching, scraping, escaping to college with $20 in my pocket and half a knapsack full of clothes and two pair of shoes.

I was destined to be done, though, again kicked off the porch before I had time to consider the deficits.

And so the block called back, even before I had left. 

Strange, that the place that I first feared, found too daunting to take on alone, so thankful to the Vice Lords, then, who took me in, kept me from committing to what could have been next.

But the streets had found a way to offer comfort, even as it conditioned and camouflaged my pain and confusion with blunt smoke and block parties.

And just like that, I was all in.

It took some time then to learn that there are more than fifty shades of Black, that out on the block, late at night, it all bleeds into contempt for what has to be done sometimes to make rent. Leaves one stuck with the consequence of these choices and narrows the focus.

Survival becomes the motivation. Not airy dreams and make-believe, navel-gazing or poetry.

And years go by before it’s time to realize the time to step aside’s gone by, lost, but not too late to reconcile.

This isn’t a terminal condition. Moments of wonder still creep in, intrude upon the brick dust and rodents, crack dens and disconnect notices, forces even the most jaded sometimes to stop and consider the strength of a full moon’s silver light as it illuminates the dark places, the cracks and crevices where the worst of us live.

It’s down here, that’s where I learned to write. To document these broken, beautiful lives. To begin to differentiate and see the subtle, chromatic shifts within the swirling shades of Black which comfort me, creates a place in these dark places that I can call home.

Ready, finally, to step off the porch and explore the neighborhood, all on my own.