by Jaidyn Bryant
Last spring, breakfast was 2 parts bleach mixed with holy water
Mornings were spent on my knees applying spf
a prayer for lighter skin
to be 14 and beautiful before the eyes of God
I don’t want to be white
But blue eyes look so pretty in His sunlight
And mama taught me that Jesus would say the same
My blackness is too robust to be holy,
My hair too kinky to be pure
My lips too plump to know the word of God
And my skin too deep, deeper than the Red Sea-
and no salvation can be found in that
My family wandered 400 years through the wilderness
And I was meant to be their godly creole belle
So auntie parts my curls like Moses,
applies the creamy crack and loosens them to waves
There was no mention of black bodies in the promised land
A good Southern black girl knows church and bible
she knows sin and grace
So Easter morning I looked to the alabaster man crucified over my grandmother’s table
and asked for forgiveness
My black is black magic
Occult, witchcraft
I shouldn’t have the audacity to let it go unbridled
to breathe life into my lye eaten strands would be like casting spells after Sunday school
-undoing the lord’s work
My family in Opelousas sees heresy in my genes
a born sinner
They make me play in the back of the house where the neighbors can’t see my transgressions
And I can’t blame them-
I’ve never seen black sheep in the Easter programs
It must be impurity and every pristine surface of my church makes it a word
So Good Friday I prayed my black body could rise to heaven
I heard someone say once that Jesus was black
If this is true then we celebrate the ascension of an African
his rise to whiteness
And if heaven is pristine white marble
and God is graceful white man
our savior must reflect the same
They revel in this-
No black jesus
Only white pillars of justice
In New Orleans I passed a Nigerian shop
I saw women who looked like me, goddesses-
Oshun, Yemaya, Oya-
juxtaposed with vibrant colors and words I didn’t understand
but yearned to
So I wandered off, lost myself in the words of Yoruba women
and when my mama found me she swatted my arm,
looked around in horror,
and told me to stop lookin’ for the devil
Does my mother see herself in Jesus’ ascension?
I look to the bottom of her jar of dark and lovely for answers
I wonder what she has been searching for all these years
why she’s passed this endless quest onto me
why she cant see the power in what we’ve built
why “come as you are” gets lost in translation every Sunday
Jesus is my savior
and all of the nights I spent reaching towards the white stars of heaven
rejecting myself over and over
I could have chosen to believe that God doesn’t make mistakes
That purity and love can be as rich as amber
and as deep as the Mississippi
That God’s love was not lost on me
and maybe one day they will see this too
Jaidyn Bryant is a freshman Biology pre-med student at Xavier University. A recent graduate of McKinley High School, she has public health aspirations, particularly in Black and Hispanic communities. This poem was written with James Baldwin’s concept of the Alabaster Christ in conjunction with particular southern black family & faith dynamics in mind.