A Room of My Own: Heartbreak Tanka

alone again

with my drunken shadow

at the edge of night ...

my friend died from heartbreak

and I am still alive

Added: written in response to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Netflix Docuseries

before I went to the UK

most people didn't treat me

like a Black woman ...

a Jamaican turns off the TV

then get stains off the diner floor

FYI: Yahoo! Entertainment, Dec. 8: Meghan Markle on meeting Prince William and Kate Middleton: "The formality on the outside carried through on the inside."

"A friend of ours actually suggested that we document ourselves through this period of time," Harry explained. "With all of the misinformation that was going on out there, especially about us and the departure, it seemed like a really sensible idea."

Added Markle, "The past six years of my life, books are written about our story from people I don't know. Doesn't it make more sense to hear our story from us?"

And Rolling Stone, Dec. 8: Most Shocking ‘Harry & Meghan’ Revelations So Far, From Nazi Costumes to Hushed Racism

The Royal Palace Silenced Meghan and Harry When It Came to Racism

Before her relationship with Prince Harry went public, and months after they began dating, Markle says she wasn’t often treated like a Black woman. “It’s very different to be a minority, but not be treated as a minority right off the bat,” she explained. When press headlines and commentary made the Black element of her biracial identity the centerpiece of their grievances against her, the Prince added, the palace issued clear instructions to them both: “Don’t say anything.”

And The New Yorker, Dec. 15: Meghan and Harry’s Netflix Fairy Tale by  Rebecca Mead

...the newly released Netflix documentary series, Harry, the Duke of Sussex, uses a similar, if less pithily expressed, formula to characterize his own sense of having been squeezed by an unwelcome triangulation: that between himself, the Palace, and the press. Harry describes a summit with other senior members of the Royal Family that was held, early in 2020, at Sandringham, one of the Queen’s country homes, to discuss what, if any, future role he and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, might play within the institution of the monarchy. “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren’t true,” Harry said. “I think, from their perspective, they had to believe that it was more about us, and maybe the issues that we had, as opposed to their partner, the media, and themselves in that relationship that was causing so much pain for us.”

Royals exist to be seen. No longer regarded as divinely authorized, and for centuries deprived—thank goodness—of meaningful legal power, the monarchy has only one real function: visibility. To be a working royal is to show up and be looked at, whether it’s attending the openings of hospital wings or factories, or arriving at galas and state ceremonies...