My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 161

Scene 5.

At the park around the corner.
It is still night.

160

sara:
My. Mine. My. Me. Ain’t mine. Again.
This is not mine, but it is mine. Other
body. Boxes. Scars. Wounded in my box.
And it ain’t mine. This womb. My curse
and prayer. For Nation-State, crushing
my city. Communal body. Personal
prayer. Body. This city say it ain’t mine.
This city say this ain’t my body. But it is
all I ever known. I was born here. My
sweat. My bones. My flesh. My heart.
If I die, don’t bury me. Don’t bury me
in no box. ‘Cause it’s the box that killed
me. You box me inside your prayers.
Tell me to be this American Dream, but
that ain’t a dream that can hold me. I
wanna break free from prayers that be
curses. Find my freedom in a new door
way, open wide. I want to be country,
and walk bare foot on broken NationState and hearts of concrete. They say:
Cut this body in four quadrants. Make
me trinket, safe house, juicy womb,
somebody’s other story. Ugly. More
beautiful and uglier still. I escape into a
whispered place ‘cause my hurt too dirty
for the main street. I come unbuttoned,
unlaced, while y’all amuse yourselves
over me in pieces, your pieces, foul
images of what I could never be. Real.
Take my life blood, make me your
sacred prayer and funky curse. Whodini
me, an obsession with boxes, name tags,
Nation- State, city scape. Everybody
wanna tell me this body ain’t mine
or my story. You own me. Make me
into the world’s hottest cautionary tale,
‘cause my panties is funky, after a long
day’s work, not suitable for front lawns
and flower boxes. I can’t fit. I want
what’s real. Kiss this wound. Open me.
Stay. Trust me to be the self I conjured
out this mess the world left.
the mayor unbinds sara.

sara returns to roy and closes the
jar. sara holds roy’s face between her
palms and kisses him.
roy:
But you said…
sara:
Shhhhh…
roy:
God, woman. You make me wanna do
it right here.

sara and roy descend to the ground.
make love under the moon’s light.

THEY

the mayor appears and begins
digging up roy’s clothes from under
the other tree. the mayor puts the
clothes inside his bag.
city gun fire heightens the urgency of
roy and sara’s love making.
sirens and helicopters cut through
the stillness.

sara:
Right now. I don’t wanna be alone.

khadija enters the apartment while
roy and sara are still at the park.

roy: (breathless)
What?

khadija: (screams)
no!

sara:
Right now.

the pocket roll call stops playing
abruptly. sara and roy sit up, fixing
their clothes, hurrying.

roy:
Now.
sara:
But it’s too soon.

sara:
Take this.
sara hands roy the jar.

roy:
It’s not.

khadija enters the apartment
covered in blood

sara:
It’s not.

the door:
Slam!

roy:
Shhhh…I see you, baby.

sara:
Khadija!

sara:
You see me.
the pocket roll call dips into a
sultry pocket.