I Keep Telling Myself I’m Done with Kanye But I Keep Remembering His Verse in “Put On”

No. No. I won’t say you’re talking crazy because I know what crazy sounds like and crazy is not a sound you’ll ever hear fed through a stadium speaker. But no, no. The world doesn’t owe you that and it doesn’t owe me that, either. But this world does owe me something. For the throats that laughed when I moved my throat to sing. For the tongues that devoured me in the shadows and denied me in the light. For the eyes that saw me as a nigger. For the eyes that saw me as their nigger. For the eyes that saw me as better than the niggers from that other school or that other side of Montgomery. And if I can borrow a second to tell you what this world owes me, then I can borrow all the time this world has ever managed to plunder from the stars to tell you what this world owes the oldest of my name that I can find when liquor and loneliness send me to the ancestry sites. _____ McCall, born in 1817. Born in South Carolina. Born into this world by a woman born in the old world. I won’t say his name because I owe him at least that, at least the respect owed to the dead who know they’ll never hear the name the gods gave them spoken in this earth again. The world owes him a name, and it owes me a name, too, but a part of me too big to hide behind these words is happy to hide behind the bootstraps god I was given because there are things worse than debt. I pray you don’t know the feeling of walking by a smile that owes you more than a smile. I pray you never have to shake the hand of a friend who yells “I ain’t forgot you” before they go order another round for the table. Yes, I do pray for you. I pray you can have this loyal spite instead of knowing the feeling of a debt satisfied that doesn’t satisfy. I pray you never meet the hollow thrones that are darker and denser than all the possibilities eaten by a black hole. I pray you never know a mountaintop filled with the gods of your grief. I pray you never know what it feels like to claim a diadem of light promised for you and have your debtors throw crumbled signatures at your feet and mumble “you’re welcome.” I pray this—I do, I do—but what is a prayer other than another loan bargained on the strength of our backs and knees? And who needs another loan? Who can survive off of the promise of tomorrow when the claws of today and yesterday are claiming their necks?