72 towards Hilltop Mall
The day I am officially screened
for bipolar disorder
I feel most alive –
alert to the way air moves
coarse through my nose and wrestles
its way through busy lungs.
I ride the 72 down San Pablo
and an obscenely cute
baby blk girl smiles
up from her mother’s lap
a grandma boards
and immediately remembers
the curl of her innocence.
eyes toward baby girl blk
grandma smiles “she got
a pink phone don’t she”
I remember – I had a pink phone once,
two actually and gave the one I held
away to another blk baby girl
on another bus while my mother
smiled in disbelief.
On this bus
The Mother takes a moment
before laughing into
the conversation. Grandma
still going: “She didn’t say nothing
the whole ride but said ‘bye bye’
to my grandson when ya’ll
got up to leave.”
Soon mama and baby girl
get up to leave. Baby Girl
smiles and throws back her
“bye bye”
as expected.
Grandmother’s joy spreads
‘cross her face. She see me
smiling into it and goes to
show me her grandson,
his sister and they mama
“Ya’ll all look just alike,” I say.
She smiles
I feel
gratitude well up
behind my eyes.
and swallow
softly.
“It feels like
something is wrong
with me…” I confess
to my blk docta lady
“but I don’t think
it’s a bad thing…”
Ra Malika Imhotep is a black feminist writer and performance artist from Atlanta, Georgia currently pursuing a doctoral degree in African American and African Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is co-convener of the experiential study group The Church of Black Feminist Thought (IG @blackfeministstudy), a member of the curatorial collective The Black Aesthetic (IG @the_blkaesthetic), and the proud daughter of Diane Makeda Johnson and Akbar Imhotep.