If ‘Insecure’ Season 2 Episode Two Was a Poem
Since 2005 I’ve narrated my life in journals. On occasion I like to carefully flip through the well-worn pages, some dog-eared, and gauge how much I’ve grown and how much I am quite the same.
On a recent flight I flipped through the pages of one of my first journals whose cover affirmed that “I’m too blessed to be stressed.” I sat in between two men and giggled aloud as though I was engaging in “Remember when…?” conversation with one of my best girlfriends. Because, well, I was. My journal has been one of my most non-judgmental friends never interrupting my thoughts but apt at confronting me with hard truths reminding me of the times I promised to humble myself and not hide behind foolish pride.
In a row with extra leg space mourning the end of a vacation gone by too quickly, my journal let me be a young lady of over a decade younger sitting on a twin bed on a spring morning in May reckoning with the idea that even before HBO’s Insecure I was channeling Season 2 Issa with a Tasha lean.
11:19 am May 30, 2005
He doesn’t know that I think of him
or care beyond belief
He doesn’t know I want him even when he doesn’t want me
He has no idea how I would engulf him and wrap him up inside of me
He doesn’t know the songs in which I sing
or the notes that I can hit
He doesn’t know the arch of my back
or the sway of my hips
the feminine rounds of my body
the softness of my lips
He doesn’t know I am his biggest fan
He doesn’t care that I am in awe
You see, his nonchalance is part of the appeal
not motivation for my withdraw
How could he know?
He’s practiced erasing us from his memory and burning the prologue of our unfinished chapter
He doesn’t know that I am afraid of him having no reaction, no love for me after
He doesn’t know the depths of it all
Nah.
He doesn’t know me at all
