Bus Ride Home

What is your presumption?

When you gaze at my ebony cheeks,

and twist your nose in disgust?

What have I done?

For you to turn away, preferring to face anything else

other than the blackness of my body?

Am I a parasite?

Because, as you flip your hair and its strings entangle in my pupil,

I am unable to detach myself from your blind hate.

Perhaps a disease?

One that compels you to shift, to move seats, to stand for an hour

so as to shelter your pale skin from grazing mine.

Do you see in me, a grave?

Dug six feet deep in your heart to keep my humanity?

Leaving my blackness bare for your catharsis?

Do I not exist?

Maybe I’m an empty vessel,

One to be filled with emptier notions of civilization,

A walking box of labels, insults and aggressions,

I wake up each day a person,

And go to sleep as a hopeless pound of flesh,

Barely kept together by brisk, aching bones,

Tired of the burden of this wretched earth,

Tired of wanting to scream but being afraid,

that I will only confirm your truth.

 The truth of my non-existence.

That even if I became the world’s best,

It would still be imputed to your whiteness,

Never my own, human self.