POEM: A LOVE LETTER TO THE UK: WHY YOU HURT ME BBY?"

 By Sam Jean-Francois

A LOVE LETTER TO THE UK: WHY YOU HURT ME BBY?

Dear UK,

What do you love about me baby? 

Is it my skin? Coco, honey, choc-lay-tey, brown, supple, rich, smooth, ebony?  Pulsating like your erections yet firm like the bones of the Saraah Baartman you got to keep?

Or is it the Hair? Do you like my curls baby? The path created by tiny flecks growing on my body leading to what you really wanna see— my BBC. Big. Black. Capital.

No, no no! What it must be is what's underneath, this pink flesh your ancestors went to war for. Breast your men tore, sucked, and raped before melting into sugar.  P*ssies licked til tongues fell ill. And bodies that in the name of silence have been cemented in British soil.

UK baby, how do I taste? 

Do I taste like the spices you hide in Brixton? Mothers squatted over pots, babies dusted in scotch bonnet peppers, and fathers dripping with the sweet tang of tobacco? 

Or is it like the ships you once commanded? Churning through your lips, moving down your throats like the victims once held chained to the Zong, now offered nationality in exchange for their labor?

whiteness · //ˈwaɪtnəs// · an unstable state

A sense of power and privilege marked by the skin and permeates through the body

an article of clothing my mother and her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother lacked

UK baby, do you see me? Truly see me for what I am and not for what I bring? And don't come here with that “I don't see color” bullshit cause you do, that what attracted you to me– my Blackness (with a capital B). You know it, I know it, the world knows it, I’m Black baby. Don't pretend not to see it because it makes you feel better to think that you're above race…that you're above me. 

colour-blind· //ˈˈkʌlə blaɪnd// · irrational noun

An illness that begins at the head and rots the body, leaving its victim in a state of disarray 

But you’ll never be free of me babes. You. Need. Me. You needed me in 1562 when John Hawkins plucked me into savagery, in 1833 when you reinvented slavery into machinery, 1948 when you offered me nationality, and today in 2022 as prove that you've changed. Take take take, that's all you do baby, don’t you care about me?

And UK, if you’ve made this far along will you answer one more thing for me? Why you hurt me baby?

Sincerely, 

The latest piece in your collection

                                                                                  

As the child of two Haitian immigrants, Sam is a 20 year old first generation college student at Bates College currently majoring in Africana Studies and specializing in Afro-Diasporic religion as well as folklore.