Sweet Song

My name is Iyeoka Ivie Okoawo

My father named me after my grandmother

My name means I want to be respected

 

She does not know her beauty

She thinks her brown skin

Has too many flaws

If she could see her image

In the Unogbo River

Where her mother was born

She would know

 

But the city holds no clear streams

West side streetlights

Shade the sunsets miracles

And the concrete covers

The soft memory of the earth’s

Unborn seed

 

Black is the color of her press and burned hair

She thinks her curls are too tight and short

If she could feel her natural birth locks blow

In Arimogijas fresh breeze

On the hill her father once stood

She would know

 

But the girl does not know her own beauty

She thinks her lips are too thick

If she could hear Benin men

Whisper thoughts across the Atlantic ocean

Praying to touch her heart

To win her for just one kiss

She would know

 

But She thinks her eyes are dark and troubled

No one told her ebony was the color

Of the universes wings

She thinks her nose is too flat

Her breasts too small, her legs too long

She never learned how to dance you know

Never learned how to run naked

On the banks of a golden pond

Embracing her existence

Guided by the light of a tropical dawn

 

She forgets her name means

Precious child who harbors the beauty

Of an ocean pearl

She forgets she received

Her soul from her grandmother

Adopted the spirit of her mother

If she could recall

The celebrations they had at her birth

She would know

If I could reach her

She would know

I would make it so there was cause

For her to know

That she is more than a motherless child

Victim of an impressionable fate

Helpless before an inconsistent society's

Interpretation of what beauty stands for

 

But I cannot reach her

If she chooses to be blind

Only she can choose to see

 

But the city holds no clear streams

West side streetlights

Shade the sunsets miracles

And the concrete covers the soft memory

Of the earth’s unborn seed