Zenovia Annotates Angelou's "Still I Rise"

Everyone in the world has gone to bed one night or another with fear or pain or loss or disappointment

and yet each of us has awakened and arisen somehow, made out ablutions, seen other human being and said, morning

How are you, fine thanks and you?

It’s amazing

wherever that abides in the human being, there is the nobleness of the human spirit

despite it all.

black and white, Asian, Spanish, Native American, pretty, plain, thin, fat loud or celibate, we rise.

you may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies.

you may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust I’ll rise

does my sassiness upset you?

why are you beset with gloom?

just cause I walk as if i have oil wells pumping in my living room

just like suns and like moons with the certainty of tides

just like hope springing high, still i rise.

did you want too see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like teardrops, weakened by my soulful cries

does my sassiness upset you?

dont take it so hard just because I laugh as if i have gold mines digging in my own backyard.

you can shoot me with your words, you can cut me with your lies, you can kill me with your hatefulness

but just like life ill rise.

Does my sexiness offend you

awe

does it come as a surprise

that i dance

as if i have diamonds at the meetings of my thighs

Out of the huts of history shame i rise

up from a past rooted in pain i rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak miraculously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

And so

naturally

pause

there i go rising