Sophia Kathryn Jackson
My friend told me a man had to be a radical to marry a black woman. Every time I look into the mirror I see someone new. Inside of my body I have got this meager variation of me who wakes up afraid. I spent the first part of my childhood getting hurt by her. I spent the rest trying to hurt her back. We both sleep in the same home, our bones beat at the shadow of the same maybe moon. And I would be ok to die if she and I held each other first.
In the meantime I want to be a poet. I want to write to you about my Black kid and my Woman kid and my kid the Kompulsed. I’m just worrying that each color may bleed through its border and make an ugly shade. I’m just worrying that it may hurt your eyes. I also want to show you that I am More Than A Mother because I am Lake Shore Drive and Huron River and Scooter Accident and Amtrak and Christmas Fern and Pecan Tree. Yes, these and only these. I want you to know that I grin before thinking and that I can shiver and steam with fury. If I could scrape off my forehead, you would see that I think in constellations. The truth is that I am the cartographer of the sky. I wake in the night to craft symbols out of connections. Here, in this work, lies infinity.
Sophia Kathryn Jackson is a sophomore studying Neuroscience and possibly English or Journalism. She lives for abstractions.
