Black Men Mondays: The Fact Is (We Need You)

Dear Black Man,

We may not say it everyday, but we need you. We need you here with us all the time, shining your light as bright as we can. We need your smile, your heart, your skin adorned in the lightest shades to the darkest. We need your locs, we need your braids, we need your low cut fades. We need your talk and we need that confidence we see in your walk. We need you.

We can not spell the word strength without you, for you are the strongest thing that we know. You are our rock. The center of our existence, for without you we have nothing. Your loyalty is something we have never seen, very unfamiliar to us, but we need you to teach us those things. You may not always say the right things and may not always do the right things either, but it's alright everyone makes mistakes.

We would like to apologize for all the times we did not say we loved you. Called you stupid and encouraged you to drop out of school, yet still upholding you to be a man of the house and enforcing "By Any Means Necessary" into your heart. Making you feel uncomfortable to the point where the streets became your home. Making it acceptable for you to walk out on your own children. Allowing prison to be your rite of passage and college to be another goal in which you could never obtain.

We apologize for making our sons hate you if you weren't or couldn't be there. We are sorry for not raising you because your father wasn't there, only loving you to a certain point, because we didn't want to love into not being a man. We apologize for our standards of what a man should be, we apologize for degrading you for choices you have made.

We would like to apologize for belittling you at every chance we got because we needed someone to blame our problems on. We apologize for ever using the N-word to refer to your faults and encouraging our woman that you will never be shit. We apologize for believing in what others say about you to the point where we have given up on you ourselves!!! We are SORRY!!! We have upheld you to high standards, not to see you fail, but because we know your potential. You are King-like, royalty in our eyes and although we may not be able to express it, we just want to see you shine.

If we could take away any of the pain that you have been caused we would. Run our fingers through your hair, kiss you on the forehead, look you in the eyes and let you know how sorry we are. Embrace you with all our love, hold you tight and whisper in your ear that you are our guiding light. Without you, we would not be half of who we are today. Massage your back to support you. Kiss you on your feet because we worship the ground you walk on. Caress you all over your body, make love to ever piece of your soul, eradicating all the pain and hurt. If we could; we would.

No amount of tears, or number of apologies can replace the hurt in which you endured, but we are here now to tell you, we need you, more than ever now. In anyway you can be there for us we need you. We need you guiding us, we need you by our side. We need you to be the reflection of the sun in our sky.

We need you dad, we need you brother, we need you uncle, we need you son, we need you father to our children, we need you husband, we need you grandfather, we need you cousin, we need you boyfriend, we need you best friend, we need you in any capacity that you can be there for us.

We want you home resting your head on our bosom cause it is your knowledge that we need to speak to our hearts. Your potential is unearthing and we are uplifting you in every way. We apologize for all the negative images, portrayals and thoughts that ever made you feel like we didn't want or need you. We have been yelling and fighting so long we forgot to LISTEN, but we are ready to hear your story NOW!!!

Speak to us, because...

The fact is, we need you!!!

Love Always, Always,

The Black Woman