For Serena Williams, and my mother

Black skin

White coat

No matter the lifetime, cotton hair

is parted and shaved. The crowning

achievement of womanhood is the

attention of the operating table,

legs splayed, an offering to

nitrile glove and silver scope.

History dilating, she cries

alongside her burgeoning womb,

skin no thicker than her oppressors.

She is her body and hundreds

of other bodies, slick in water,

in light — a child, and a clot

to compress with black tulle,

the uplifted gaze of the world.

Had ears opened, maybe her mothers

would have guided her with a strength

that I am reminded warrants

jealousy, irreducible to Latin.

But an eleven of ten

remains a four.

Image courtesy of iStock.com/vaitekune