WHAT IT IS NOT 

as a black woman.
a woman of color. 
writer. 
artist.
creative.
my work is not a literary zoo. 
for you to come observe. learn. about the animals. 
or
a space to come and dissolve into a plastic empathy.
or a space to publicly, loudly, dominantly flog your privileges.

nor is it
a warm indiscriminate. cavernous. lap to lay in. 
it is a boundary. 
i am a boundary. 

— unmammy 

— Nayyirah Waheed, Salt