Brown Girl Mixtape

How we sing, even as we are boiled alive.

—Fatima Lim-Wilson

Track: "Gaze," Sweetback, feat. Amel Larrieux

Squeeze your hand into a fist. Now, loosen, just a bit.                            They say that is the heart, heat, fiber, sugar. Cut          around its core, score and invert. Take your teeth                            to its golden flesh and bite. They say this is the heart                    of a lovely girl. In these stories, there is always a girl,lovely as that dream just before waking. There is always                    a girl, whose dainty feet make light where she toe taps          the earth, so soft. Elders tell her patience will saint her.And so she waits. There is always heartbreak, chambers                    washed in longing, pulsing dark inside the body. She waits.          They say she waited with the waning moon, until the dawn.                            She waited. Press your index finger and tall finger                                          into the underside of your jawbone, and count.

Track: "My Life," Mary. J. Blige

Back in the day, we burned white sage, we filled our small spaces with lavender and sunlight. We were such love thirsty brown girls, aching, unslaked. How do you fill a vessel of want?Back in the day, always on the edges, looking into others' tidy white lives. When we subsisted on cheap tea and nicotine, when our belongings, mostly poem-filled notebooks, fit neat into milk crates.Back in the day, we wished to be so beautiful in our darkness. We occupied nowhere, stared into spaces we didn't think to belong. We walked if we didn't have bus fare. If you look at our lives back in the day, you will see such sad girls, and so much unmet grace.

Track: "Blackwinged Bird," Emm Gryner

We won't hold our tongues fast.We won't unforget all we've been made to stuff back into our darkest places and sew shut.We know the heart heals with time, and that bruises heal too.We know how to leave a boy who hurts with words or closed fists. We know how to ghost a boy who does not even deserve our ghost.We know how to change numbers and locks, and that sometimes behind a bolted door, the only thing that will keep us company is a good record collection and a fire.We remember not to say sorry.We know some boys do not deserve a proper goodbye.

Track: "Ice Age," How to Destroy Angels

There is always a brown girl who knows exactly how and when to open up the walls and disappear. We know this is easy as breathing on a cool day. We know how to pluck music from the air, and how to pluck away grays. We know how to call for the ocean to rise, cold salt and tide, how to bury, and how to build a fire. We know we are that ocean. We know how to strip away sound, pulse, and subside. From barely a sigh, we can hold a pure note high. We know that to be a brown girl is to call the ocean is to call to the self is to know you have to find a way.

Track: "Dahil Sa Iyo," Pinay

Do you know how old you were when you first saw the ocean,How old you were when the ocean first touched you,How old you were when you knew you were the ocean.Do you remember its cradle and nudge, its pull and boom, your skin shocked by your own pinpricks and ice, do you remember sinking.How were you ever so new, swaying into something so immense, so beyond sight.Do you remember tasting slip, sand, and swell.How were you ever anything but a siren singing sea in woman skin, gliding in quiet, light filtered through bluegreen filtered through plastic and shard.Do you remember the rocks. How old were you when you returned.

Track: "Blood Moon," Low Leaf

All I have enters...