FUTURE FIRST | Spoken Word Short Film | MYM
# FUTURE FIRST | Spoken Word Short Film | MYM
## Embracing Your Identity
Dear beautiful brown girl, I remember when you sit for hours head resting on your mother’s lap as she braided one strand over one strand under your neck. Your hair would ache and at times the comb would get tangled in your full head of curls, but you’d smile as the oil would run down your mother’s palm and onto your mane, a thick and inescapable domain. She sang songs to soothe you as she braided, teaching you the secret language that girls with hair like you spoke.
## Embracing Your Beauty
She taught you about the silent hum that surrounds us, the earth that shifts around us. At school, they bluff and taunt at girls like us, whose hair announced her before she entered the room and stood tall above her head, adding inches and miles. Theirs falls like rain, while they stick their hands inside, hoping to find gold when they bring their palms out. Despite the pain and tearing down of your beauty, you are still as beautiful as ever.
## Embracing Your Strength
But the pain is hanging too heavy around your neck, and it is getting harder to wear off. You grab a scissors from the desk, hold it to your chest, and begin to cut away the names, the dread. You shout and curse all the words you left unsaid, wondering why you didn’t tell them how beautiful you are, why you didn’t use the armor your mother gave you. You begin to erase those features that made you whole and brought you home to yourself.
## Embracing Your Future
Dear brown girl, I can see a future with deeper shades of blue in the sky, an ocean of grace that reflects you and I. A future where they try to rob us of our dances and rhythms, but we remain wild and untamed. There will come a time where you breathe easier, like first breaths away from your mother’s prompt, like first steps away from your mother’s stomp. The wind will kiss you, and the tears you store will fade to vapor, not pour like streams.
Dear beautiful brown girl, we are the past, present, and the future. We will see the future first.
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