Sista in the Mirror
By Sonja L. Batiste
Who are you really, if you decide to see yourself?
Are you all that say you are or are you someone else?
You talk of what you deserve and what is owed to you.
you talk of what you give and all you think you do.
You pick apart your coworkers, your family and your friends.
And then you take it even further and you pick apart you man.
What he is not doing, what he does not understand.
How much he is not making, and what he lacks as a real man.
How he is not a good father, or does not help out at home
how he goes out with is friends and leaves you all alone.
How he falls asleep at night, leaving you frustrated and unsatisfied
yet in the morning expects his bacon and his eggs on the side.
You say you stay for the kids and because you said, “I do”
You say you deserve better and that he just don’t know you.
You say, you say, you say, well my sister STOP right now.
Cause sista to sista I’ma try to break it down.
What do you do to support that strong black man?
Instead of asking to be being understood, do you seek to understand.
Now before you curse me out, or think I am coming at you wrong,
understand that I walked in your shoes and often sung the same song.
So caught up in my own greatness and all that I achieved,
just knowing that a man should feel lucky just to have me.
Having my life all planned out, I knew what I would get
I knew what I deserved and what I could not accept.
I was a woman with dignity, self-respect, and class
I worked for what I wanted and expected it to last.
I went to school, I went to work, I took damn good care of my kids
I went to church, hung with the girls, and thought I did more than anyone did.
The perfect package, the perfect woman, all any man could want.
A self-acclaimed Queen was my highest selling point.
So, why am I alone, as you are soon to be
if you only keep looking but fail to really see.
He is not your prized possession, your material to own
the core of his manhood to you does not belong.
When was the last time you asked, what it is he really needs,
and did you listen to the answer, or did you make-believe.
And when he told you his wants and shared with you that void
did you work to make it happen or simply get annoyed.
Did you make it about him and what he needs as your man
Did you devise a way? Did you make a plan.
When he was parched with thirst deep down in his soul
Did you give him water or a bucket with a hole.
Did you give him that one thing he needed most of all.
Did you make him feel you’d catch him and never let him fall?
Did you have his back or did you leave him ass out
Giving the worse blow you can give and causing him to doubt.
Trying to define what you have yet to understand
breaking down the trust between you and your man.
Making it about yourself and what it is that you feel
Upset at the declaration, ‘if you don’t do your job someone else will’
So, sista look in the mirror, yet look beyond your own reflection
search for the soul of your man, stop looking for perfection.
Don’t make it about yourself, what you think and what you feel
make it about the love and how to make that love real.
Cause you see my sista, my lesson I have learned
and I know what must be done and I know what must be earned
So, while you are looking in the mirror be careful what you see
the one smiling at you knowingly, might turn out to me be
Cause if the man you have is one I foolishly let slip away.
You better get your heart right, cause I wont make that same mistake.
