My mother said this to me

long before Beyoncé lifted the lyrics

from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,

and what my mother meant by

Don’t stray was that she knew

all about it—the way it feels to need

someone to love you, someone

not your kind, someone white,

some one some many who live

because so many of mine

have not, and further, live on top of

those of ours who don’t.

I’ll say, say, say,

I’ll say, say, say,

What is the United States if not a clot

of clouds? If not spilled milk? Or blood?

If not the place we once were

in the millions? America is Maps—

Maps are ghosts: white and

layered with people and places I see through.

My mother has always known best,

knew that I’d been begging for them,

to lay my face against their white

laps, to be held in something more

than the loud light of their projectors

of themselves they flicker—sepia

or blue—all over my body.

All this time,

I thought my mother said, Wait,

as in, Give them a little more time

to know your worth,

when really, she said, Weight,

meaning heft, preparing me

for the yoke of myself,

the beast of my country’s burdens,

which is less worse than

my country’s plow. Yes,

when my mother said,

They don’t love you like I love you,

she meant,

Natalie, that doesn’t mean

you aren’t good.

*The italicized words, with the exception of the final stanza, come from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Maps."