Personal Time Off (P.T.O) - A Poem

Personal Time Off (P.T.O).?! 

by: Tenisha

They say we get days now.
Stamp it on the calendar.
Ink it official.
Call it progress.

Two squares out of three hundred and sixty-five —
one whispering the dream of Martin Luther King Jr.,
one echoing the news that freedom
had already been late to the party
on Juneteenth.

Two days.
To celebrate surviving.
Personal Time Off.

But time has never really been personal for us.
Even rest feels monitored.
Even joy feels audited.
Even silence feels like we owe someone an explanation.

We are permitted to heal —
but only in ways that make others comfortable.
Permitted to forgive —
but not to remember too loudly.
Commanded to rise —
by their standards
and our own —
but never high enough
to disrupt the skyline.

We rest —
but never all the way down.
Because rest requires safety.
And safety has always been conditional.

What is a day off
when your mind is still on guard?
When your body remembers things —
history books abbreviated,
revised so we disappear.

Personal Time off?

When freedom itself once arrived,
confusing, delayed,
like a letter postmarked two years too late.

Still —
we rest anyway.
We rest in ways
that don’t require permission.

Our resilience is the price
of their attempt to curse us as unworthy.
And yet —
we rise,
we breathe,
we remain.

Personal Time OFF!