Spine

Tough bone and flexible cartilage

Thick and strong

Dependable and uplifting

The spine, while hidden behind pounds of connected sinew and skin

It is the true strength within the greater body

The strains of the masses are dependent on its virtue

But like a polar bear of political narrative

When the spine is thought of as white, masculine, material, inflexible

It is black, porous, feminine,

flexing like bamboo, bending

In any direction to support those pounds of sinew and skin

Hidden, like fences and black faces

She must grip and hold what slips between fingertips

A son from mortality

A nation losing its morality

A veritable atlas, expected to turn on her axis at a moments notice

To keep the heads of others afloat

The role of black cervix is to bear

Her ache is inconsequential

Because when no one else wants to stand

The spine gathers her strength,

Rising too fast to go by vertebrae

Ignoring the weight of expectations

Screaming libations of her own tears

And sacrificing of her own form

Cracking but never collapsing

Structural integrity

Cannot be spelled without grit

Graceful in her incredulity

Of a body so based in pools of her effort but pretending to stand on mountaintops looking down it's crooked nose at her

Wondering why water can't climb up mountainsides

But like stone, she is strong as bone

And bears the weight of expectations

And so often, she does it alone