ty. 🖤

. ౿ "𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊 𝖘𝖆𝖞 𝖎’𝖒 𝖜𝖆𝖞 𝖙𝖔 𝖋𝖚𝖑𝖑 𝖔𝖋 𝖒𝖞𝖘𝖊𝖑𝖋. 𝖞𝖔𝖚’𝖗𝖊 𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍𝖙!" ── .✦

[combustivecreationss]

ふるさと…!

RUINS ✧ sheher. 17. bi+. blk writer.

gold-dusted grief. sun-warmed softness. holy things stitched together with hood stories and trembling hands.

essays. poetry. short fiction. girlhood, blackness, divinity, ruin.

. ౿ M. LIST | RULES | KO-FI ── .✦

@combustivecreationss don’t plagiarize. don’t remix my work without credit.

[combustivecreationss]

Original Story

TW: racism, discrimination, racial profiling, generational trauma, and microaggressions

ALL-AMERICAN BOYS

They called us All-American before we ever agreed to it.

Like somebody stitched the title across our backs in varsity letters and expected us to run with it. Like we didn’t feel the thread pulling at our skin.

I been thinking about that phrase since I was old enough to spell it. All. American. Boys.

All is a funny word.

‘Cause it never really meant all of us.

I was born in a hospital that smelled like bleach and hope. Mama said I came out quiet, eyes open, looking around like I was already studying the room. “He observant,” she told everybody. “He gon’ be something.” Black mothers love prophecy. It’s how they armor their babies before the world get a chance to bruise ‘em.

By kindergarten, I knew the Pledge of Allegiance by heart. Hand over chest, voice high and sweet. “With liberty and justice for all.” I used to say that last part extra loud. For all. I believed it. Wholehearted. Didn’t know belief and reality don’t always shake hands.

I’m an All-American boy.

But what that mean when your mama teach you two versions of the truth?

Version one: You are brilliant. You are chosen. You come from kings and cotton fields and survivors who turned chains into rhythm.

Version two: Keep your hands where they can see ‘em. Don’t run in stores. Don’t argue with authority. If they pull you over, say yes sir, no sir, even if your pride start itching under your skin.

I learned to hold both versions at once.

That’s the real curriculum where I’m from.

At school, I was “well-spoken.” They said it like surprise wrapped in praise. “You articulate.” I wore it like a borrowed jacket. Didn’t quite fit but I kept it buttoned. I knew what they meant. Meant I didn’t sound like what they expected. Meant I was the exception they could point to when statistics got uncomfortable.

But I am not an exception.

I am the rule they refuse to rewrite.

My friends—man, my friends are galaxies.

Jalen with the crooked smile and hands quick as lightning on a basketball. He move like gravity don’t apply to him. But even he slow down when sirens start singing in the distance.

Terrence who pretend he don’t care about grades but stay up past midnight watching YouTube tutorials so he can fix his mama’s car. His hands always smell like oil and ambition.

Micah who draw superheroes with Afros big as halos. In his sketchbook, we fly. Ain’t no bullets in his pages. Ain’t no fear.

We all All-American boys.

Just depends who telling the story.

Sometimes America tell it like this: promising young man. Future leader. Scholarship material.

Other times it sound like: suspect. Aggressive. Threat.

I remember the first time I felt the shift.

I was twelve. Tall already. Voice cracking like it ain’t know which direction to grow. Me and Jalen was walking home from the corner store, laughing too loud about something stupid—probably nothing. A police car crept past slow. Windows tinted like judgment.

They didn’t stop us.

But they looked.

And that look did something.

It took the air and pressed it flat.

I felt my body rearrange itself. Shoulders straight. Laugh quieter. Hands visible. Whole personality shrinking into something more “acceptable.”

That was the day I realized I had graduated from cute to caution.

That’s an American rite of passage nobody celebrate.

At home, I get to be soft.

Mama kitchen smell like garlic and onions and memory. She play old soul records and hum while she cook. In that space, I am not a headline waiting to happen. I am just her baby. The one who still leave cereal bowls in the sink. The one who still get forehead kisses before bed.

Daddy don’t talk much about fear, but I see it in how he watch the news. Jaw tight. Remote gripped like it owe him answers. When another Black boy flash across the screen—yearbook photo, bright smile, dates underneath—he go quiet. Real quiet.

“Could be anybody,” he mutter.

He mean could be me.

All-American boys don’t get the luxury of invisibility. We hypervisible and unseen at the same time. Folks watch how we dress, how we talk, how we stand. But they don’t always see the trembling under it. The calculations. The constant math of survival.

If I wear a hoodie, is it too much?

If I speak up in class, am I passionate or angry?

If I fall in love, is my tenderness safe?

I carry these questions like loose change in my pocket. Always there. Always clinking.

But don’t get it twisted.

We are joy, too.

We are spades games loud enough to shake the walls. We are group chats full of roasting and “you ugly” meaning I love you. We are dap-ups that turn into choreography. We are barbershop debates about who the GOAT like it’s theology.

In the barbershop, mirrors line the walls so you see yourself infinite. Fresh fade sharp enough to cut doubt clean off your forehead. That chair is confession booth and throne at the same time. Old heads talk about “back in my day” and we roll our eyes but listen anyway.

That’s America too.

Just not the version in textbooks.

Textbooks don’t show my grandmother’s hands, rough from years of work, resting on a Bible and a voter registration card like both are sacred. Don’t show my cousin practicing a speech for student council, tripping over words but refusing to quit. Don’t show how we celebrate small wins like championships.

All-American boy.

They love us most when we’re exceptional. When we break records. When we become symbols of “progress.” But what about when we ordinary? When we confused and hormonal and trying to figure out who we are beyond survival?

I don’t wanna just survive.

I wanna live loud.

I wanna fall apart without it being blamed on my culture. I wanna try and fail and try again without somebody saying, “See? Told you.” I wanna exist without being a lesson.

Sometimes I imagine a country where we don’t have to rehearse our innocence.

Where my little cousin can run through a park at dusk and the only thing chasing him is his own laughter.

He five right now. Gap-toothed. Obsessed with dinosaurs. He don’t know about stereotypes yet. Don’t know about code-switching. He just know he like blue and macaroni and being spun around till he dizzy.

I watch him and feel this mix of hope and terror.

Hope that he grow into himself fearless.

Terror that the world might try to teach him fear anyway.

We inherit resilience like it’s genetic. Like brown skin come preloaded with endurance. But resilience ain’t supposed to be permanent armor. It get heavy. It dig into your shoulders after a while.

Some nights I lie in bed and think about the phrase All-American like it’s a question instead of a title.

Who decides?

Is it the flag? The anthem? The founding fathers whose portraits don’t look like me?

Or is it the people?

If it’s the people, then we been American from jump. From the moment our ancestors’ feet touched this soil—by force, by fate, by fire. We built railroads. Picked cotton. Wrote blues. Bled in wars. Marched in streets. Voted when they told us not to. Loved a country that kept testing that love.

That sound American to me.

I walk through hallways at school and see reflections in trophy cases. My brown face bending in gold metal. I think about how often we been told to see ourselves as lack. As less than.

But I am not lack.

I am legacy.

I am my mama’s tired eyes turned into determination. I am my daddy’s silence turned into strategy. I am every ancestor who survived something unspeakable so I could complain about homework and dream about college.

All-American boy.

Maybe it mean contradiction.

It mean loving hip-hop and Shakespeare. It mean knowing how to tie a tie and throw a punch if necessary. It mean praying and protesting. It mean crying in private and laughing in public.

It mean existing in a country that sometimes fear your shadow but steal your style.

I used to think being All-American meant fitting in.

Now I think it mean refusing to disappear.

Every time I step outside with my head high, that’s declaration. Every time I speak in my natural rhythm, that’s resistance. Every time I choose kindness over bitterness, that’s revolution.

Because it would be easy to let the weight turn me hard.

Easy to shrink into anger.

Easy to believe the worst version of what they say.

But I know better.

I’ve seen too much beauty in us.

I’ve seen boys who ain’t got much still split their last dollar for a friend. I’ve seen teenagers carry their siblings on their hips like second nature. I’ve seen brilliance bloom in classrooms that barely got funding.

We are not what they reduce us to.

We are not caution tape.

We are not statistics.

We are not tragedies waiting for a camera crew.

We are complicated. Soft. Loud. Thoughtful. Reckless. Responsible. Dreaming.

We are All-American boys not because the country stamped us so—but because we claim it.

Because we here.

Because our laughter echo down streets named after men who never imagined us free.

Because our sneakers pound pavement our ancestors once weren’t allowed to walk on without permission.

Because we dare to imagine futures bigger than fear.

I don’t know what America will become.

But I know who I am becoming.

I am a boy learning how to hold tenderness in one hand and truth in the other. I am learning that my worth ain’t conditional. Ain’t dependent on how comfortable I make somebody else feel.

When I say I’m an All-American boy now, it don’t sound like permission.

It sound like ownership.

Like I finally realized the title was never theirs to gatekeep.

It belong to the kid in the hoodie and the kid in the honor roll assembly. The athlete and the artist. The quiet one and the loud one. The scared one and the brave one—sometimes all in the same body.

Especially in the same body.

So yeah.

I’m an All-American boy.

Not polished. Not perfect. Not palatable all the time.

But present.

Breathing.

Dreaming.

And redefining what that phrase mean every single day I wake up and choose to stay soft in a world that keep trying to make me stone.

That’s American too.

@combustivecreationss don’t plagiarize. don’t remix my work without credit.

[saydesole]

Black Authors

Happy Black History is Everyday

Toni Morrison 1931-2019

James Baldwin 1924-1987

Octavia E Butler 1947-2006

Langston Hughes 1901-1967

Maya Angelou 1928-2014

Ralph Ellison 1914-1994

Zora Neale Hurston 1891-1960

W.E.B Du Bois 1868-1963

[combustivecreationss]

Toni Morrison’s attention to interiority, James Baldwin’s emotional clarity, Maya Angelou’s reverence for resilience, Zora Neale Hurston’s love of Black dialect and everyday brilliance. I don’t aim to replicate them, because nobody can. But I write in gratitude for the door they kicked open.

[combustivecreationss]

RULES ✧

✧ INTERACTIONS

✦ minors can interact. ✦ adults can interact. ✦ just act like you have sense.

don’t be weird. don’t be creepy. don’t cross lines that aren’t yours.

if you wouldn’t say it in front of your mama, don’t say it to me.

———

✧ RESPECT THE CRAFT

do not: copy my work, repost full pieces without permission, translate my writing and post it elsewhere, feed my work into ai, “get inspired” and rewrite it bar for bar

my words are not public property just because they’re posted.

you can: reblog and quote small excerpts with credit

———

✧ REQUESTS / PROMPTS

i may or may not take prompts. if i do, they will be original concepts only.

@combustivecreationss don’t plagiarize. don’t remix my work without credit.