Melanin Ruins

What a beautifully tumultuous relationship it is, to have our origin story depicted across our bodies.

The hue of lands that once our elders resided within.

The warmth of each tone that differs from the other.

A love language made up of a thousand words, our shades tell stories, of love, respect, power.

The audacity! The utter audacity, to think we can call this land our home too.

These ferociously crisp winters that have pierced our skins each morning since we were brought in to existence.

These fleeting summer breezes we yearn for all the same and bask in its glory, for the few days it blesses us each year.

These wondrous cultural norms which we have made our own, to accept and to love, to have and to hold. Because we call this land our home too.

Don’t you see? We are wedded to it, just the same as you.

But no, no, no. This is not our land.

We are not its people. We are vermin, bottom of the barrel, bottom of the food chain.

Pecking order? It goes: Them, wildlife, discarded matter, the incomprehensible and then, us.

From land to land, where beauty resides in the most stupendous of ways.

Breathtakingly, meticulously crafted wonders of the world.

Small gardens of Eden, technological wonders, modernism at its finest.

With lovingly preserved history dotted about, amidst the architectural grandeur,

And it speaks tales of lands that once were in existence.

But every land has a shadowed land within.

An anti-utopia.

Where the hated, the ridiculed, the vermin reside.

It be us! The cursed masses.

How dare we! How dare we breathe! How dare we live! How dare we be at peace!

We have no right to freedom, who the fuck said we were allowed to live free of persecution?

We are lowly scum walking the Earth, waiting.

Waiting to be punished.

Waiting to be mutilated.

Waiting to be ravished.

Waiting to be annihilated, eradicated, wiped off the face of your Earth.

Our tint was our pride you know.

Until it was associated with being evil, unholy, wicked.

Now, we are all evil pieces of shit, swarming the Earth, your Earth, like a modern-day plague.

And we must be eradicated at all costs.

For you will not be at peace, until we have all breathed our last breath.

Until we are all crushed under the rubble of our own homes.

Until we are shot at, in the back, in the front, from above, whilst we sleep, whilst we pray, whilst we try to just fucking stay alive.

We loved you oh people, oh beautiful people.

We loved you since the day our grandparents came to start a new in these picturesque lands alongside you.

But your love for your talking boxes crushed us down to our souls.

You rapturously received all the “knowledge” it pierced through your minds.

You hungrily accepted the “brown” noise it plunged down your throat.

Tell-A-Vision. They gave you their vision, and you lapped it up, like a hungry dog stumbling upon water in the Texan sun.

And now we are reduced to nothing.

We are, melanin ruins.