Crimes of Future Past

Sticks and stones will break bones but words will break my spirit. 

Slick and slow you chip and chip and chip until my bones curve in and I am hunched onto the ground, deformed and subhuman. 

I'm not asking for much. I want to feel human. I'm asking to stand equal, as brothers, sisters and persons in arms. 

When a multitude of white hands reach out; wrenching, gripping and tugging at my hair I feel like an animal in a petting zoo. I do not want to know how 'weird' it feels to you or how funny it looks to you. I am not a comparison by which you can reflect your Eurocentric features. I am not the other. I am not less than a human. 

When you tell me that you've never had sex with one of my kind before, and you'd like to try us out. It doesn't make me feel wanted, it makes me feel like a shameful, sinful and unsanitary desire. I will not be your fetish. I refuse to be your bizarre and wild experience. I answer only to woman and companion. 

The future can only get worse when we still live within the boundaries of your ancestors' crimes. They came to our lands, they set themselves above us and they ripped apart our cultures. 

We refuse to be regarded as exotic because we refuse to accept that you are the standard. 

You ask me when I will be able to move on and get over it. 

I tell you that when you accept the crimes of your history, you destroy the boundaries your fathers built to constrict us and you rewrite your language of superiority- only then will we forgive the suffering of our past. 

Then we can begin to live in a world that truly transcends the implications of race. A world where everyone can stand as human and a soul first, before race, gender, class and sexuality

This spoken word piece originally featured in Boshemia Magazine Issue 02: The Sublime.