After Sunset (Black History Month Poetry)

Law rules daylight.
Stand like this.
Walk like this.
Pick da cotton like this ‘fore massa sees you,
or risk da whip.

We survive the beating sun.
We plot escape for freedom.

But after sunset,
promises break.
After midnight,
enslavers rest, our virtue forgotten —
so how does the whip pass to hands that look like mine?

“Brotha!” he shouts.
“Sista!” she cries.
“Help me,” they holler for me all day.

But after sunset…
when the heat lifts…
when the dark wraps around us like protective skin,
after sunset,
my kinfolk crack that polished whip
against my bare ribs with their tongue.

“Negroes don’t love like that!”
“Devils in ‘em!”
“Unholy!”

You spit vile words at me,
like seeds into dirt,
planting crop we swore we’d burn.