1600
By Yew Dale-Green Cooper
My mind is a battlefield
and a sacred temple.
A place where history whispers
and today screams.
Where peace and pressure
live side by side.
Some days, I smile
while my thoughts are breaking.
Some days, I laugh
while I’m drowning in silence.
Because being Black
means learning to suffer in secret
and succeed in public.
They see strength,
but they don’t see the weight.
They see the crown,
but not the cracks beneath it.
They see the walk,
the confidence,
the survival…
But not the boy who never felt safe.
Not the man who never felt seen.
My mind carries generations.
The prayers of ancestors.
The pain of injustice.
The code-switching.
The overthinking.
The constant calculating
of how to stay alive,
be accepted,
and still be me.
You ever try to breathe
when your existence feels like resistance?
But I’m still here.
Still thinking.
Still feeling.
Still growing through everything
they said would break me.
I’ve cried behind closed doors.
I’ve questioned God.
I’ve held it together
when everything inside was falling apart.
But I’ve also healed.
I’ve also smiled from my soul.
I’ve also chosen therapy
over trauma.
I’ve learned that I am more
than the fear.
More than the fight.
More than the expectation to be “okay.”
Closing lines, calm, strong, sacred
I am not just strong.
I am soft.
I am sacred.
I am layered.
The mind of a Black soul
is not a warzone,
it is a garden
still learning to bloom
in a world that tried to bury it.
And still…
We rise.
