Maybe I should throw something. Lash out. Scream. Would it make me feel better? It’s the first I realized I hated silence, my dad would play music when I first woke up, he would play it really loud. And I would wish for nothing more than for him to turn it off, for Jill Scott to shut the hell up. Strawberry letter 23, Stevie Wonder, Jill Scott, Art blakey, all black artists, artists that I grew up to be embarrassed to know, pretend I didn’t like. It’s a monopoly most if not all black kids go through. Pretending to hate the color around you, rapping your skin and your brain. My dad always told me to work 10x harder than that of the white woman, and if it was a white man, 100x harder. But I don’t want to anymore, I’m tired, and this is causing the want to throw this obnoxious chevron patterned coffee cup, I now despise this cup. 

My dad doesn’t play music loud anymore. He doesn’t scold me when I roll my eyes at him for doing so anymore, or talk about Art blakeys...whatever addiction. Now I have the silence I’ve been wanting since child years, it’s quiet. As the music stopped my dad began sleeping on the couch, “Your mom snores too loud”. “Your dad likes to keep the fan on I get stuffy”. Excuses. It only occurred to me recently, my dad has grown silent too. As I curl on the floor every night with a wet face, I want the music back. I just want mom and dad to dance to old black classics. Instead, we’re all dancing to the beat of our own melancholic hymn, walking as we’ve stepped out of disaster. Picking at each other like crows, the baby crow didn’t close her windows now all the heat has come flushing in, daddy crow should scold her, a hint of malice in every sentence he sings. Baby crow fights back, it wasn’t her fault, daddy crow just flies away. 

If somebody told me when I was seven that being a teenage girl was so draining, well, I wouldn’t believe them. But in a sense of feeling prepared, I could’ve said I would’ve known. What can I do? I’m sixteen, thirty dollars and forty-four cents in my bank account. I think this is the first time I realized I could change the world or at least the way my dad hits the couch and yells every time the football players missed the goal. How serious can this be?