target practice

The air is thick with the copper of my own adrenaline,

the salt of a thousand years of being the target, the mark, the stone.

They do not see me. They see a projection of their own rot,

a shadow they chase because they are afraid of the light I carry in my marrow.

My rage is not a mistake.

It is a precision tool, a dark and holy heat

born in the belly, where the truth sits heavy as lead.

They follow my heels with the clumsy boots of the blind,

thinking they can trap a sea in a net of their own making,

thinking they can consume the sun without burning their throats.

I am not your problem. I am not your mirror.

I am the ancestor’s breath made visible,

the artist who carves silence into a weapon of survival.

I will not offer up my peace as a sacrifice to your inadequacy.

I will not spill. I will not break.

I will harden into the diamond that cuts your glass intentions.

Every breath I take is a refusal.

Every step is a reclaiming of the earth you think you own.

My anger is a daughter of my love—

for my skin, for my history, for the way the light hits the growing trees

in a home you can never reach.

I am more than the cage you have built for me.

I am the door, the key, and the hand

that turns a resilient future.