A Letter From Lucy Australopithecus Afarensis (A.K.A Mitochondrial Eve)
On Behalf Of Herself And All Her Daughters
a study in negation
Her letter,
carved into stone, with a hammer and chisel,
or perhaps a long, curved, lacquered
fingernail, was found
buried under layers of sedimentary rock,
which actually turned out to be
A disintegrating temple, the edges whipped by wind and sand,
built up and again and again through millennia
By a desperate need to cover what lay beneath
She wanted to be clear so she wrote in the first person
Over a coffee while cradling her third born.
After a brief report on the current
overcast and lush African day,
She got down to it:
Dear Descendants,
Enclosed please find an exhaustive list detailing
what I and those who look like me -
Dusky, Ripe and African- Are not.
I am not here to be your whipping boy
I am not here to soothe your genitals
I am not here to work out your shit on
I am not your Oprah, Your Mammy, Your Fixation, Your Battery
I will not Be Sending You Home With A Free Appliance
I am Not Your Nigger, Or Your Magical Negro
I am Not Your Id, or Your Lost Libido
I am Not Your Free Labor, Your Slave, Or Your Stepping Stone To Fame
I am Not What You Sneak Into In the Middle Of The Night To Rape
I am Not Your Place From Which To Steal Ideas,
or Entire Genres of Music
I am Not Your Back Drop, Your Extra, Your Measuring Tool of Your Success
I am Not The Thing You Look Down On To See How High You’ve Climbed
I am Not Your Object of Schadenfreude, or Your Reason For Self Pity
I am Not That Which You Need To Surpass In Order to Live With Yourself
I am Not Your Music Maker, Your Cook or the Spice in Your Life
I am Not Your Ideal Submissive Female or Your Longed For Dominatrix
I am Not Your Token, Your Symbol, Not Even Your Long Lost Ancient Queen
I will not Sit on Your Pedestal, Or tumble Downward while
You touch yourself cuz you get off
On the Sort of Thing
I am not here for you to diddle while you work out your orientation,
I am not here to help you Determine Whether You Are Lesbian Or Gay, a Man or a Woman
I am not Your Abuser or Your Healer, or Anything In Between
I will not Make Up For The Sins of Your Wife, or Reverse Engineer Your Castration
I am Not Your Criminal, Your Scapegoat, Your Everything That’s Wrong With The World
I am Not Your Goddess, or Object of Any Sort- whether that be the Object of worship, adulation, Back Handed Compliments or Impossible Expectations.
I am Not Your Surrogate or Your Fetish, I am Not the Mirror in Which You See the Demise of Your
Entire Race
Or Your Portal To Racial Supremacy
I am not the Template From Which To Make Pale Kardashian-esque Imitations of My Voice, My Strength or My High Round Ass
I am Not The Reason Your Lover Broke Up With You, I am Not Your Boyfriend Who Beats Up On You, Or Your Girlfriend Who wanted Somebody Else.
I am Not Your Competition or the Walking Embodiment of Your Feminine, Black Self Hatred
I will not Make You Look Better In Front Of White People While They Divide & Conquer Us
I am not the Bad Neighborhood, Poverty & Degradation You Thought You Escaped
I am not the Reason You Are Ashamed You of Your Blackness.
Nor am I your Aspirational Popstar Who Sleeps in her Sequins and Fake Hair
My Naps and Coils Are Not A Looking Glass Into Your Low Self Esteem.
I am Not Your Big Butt, Your Smile or Your Nasty Chicken Wings
I am Not The Reason Harambe Was Shot.
I am also NOT Scarlett Johanssan
Nor did she ever, ever give me the Spark of Life
No matter what the movie says
I am Not Your Oedipal Or Electra Complex, I was Here Before You Were Born But I Am Not Raising You.
I am not something Whose Contribution You Can Erase
From Your Abysmal Record of History
AND I AM DEFINITELY NOT, enfin, the
reason for
YOUR FALL
FROM GRACE
My choices in food had nothing to do with you or a snake or anybody else.
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop
Following, Berating, Taunting, Robbing, Dominating, Draining, Depicting and Disappointing Me, Stop Your Projectile Projections onto Me, Stop Bouncing Your Fragile Ego Off On Me. Stop Making Promises You Cannot Keep and Keeping Me Away From My Own Promise
I will not be used.
And I don’t even like
Apples.
Signed Lucy Australopithecus, A.K.A. Mitochondrial Eve
Of The Nation of First Humans