I stood standing in front of the bathroom mirror at the age of 7
Hoping to open my eyes wide enough to look more like the pairs of my parents’
Appearances never changed
But always tried to rearrange
Whitewash the thoughts of the guilt
of a concept I could never frame
So I tacked i up on the backwall of my closet
Pretending that I lost it amidst stockpiled piles of misplaced anger
That played the ammunition for family arguments
I took my fear and swallowed it
Rested all my hate on my tongue and cocked it
Let the frustration fester
Till it fractured my speech’s once fluid notes
Making the world feel slightly sloped
Everything backslid
Towards my self-centered core
Identity crisis was my idol
Call it Isis
I thought it gave me license
To set myself apart from the world
Instead
It stood upright
a dagger dance
a whetstone pirouette
carving out a resting place in my mind
I was just a goatskin bled dry of it’s bitter wine
A handless clock told by the dark how to keep time

This is for every child that sits behind a history book that wasn’t written for them
So they cover up their pain with artistry
The edges where the text stopped and crayon canvases begin
Framing the crossing of the Delaware and the great Sphinx
the wax bleeding into history
blotting out George Washington's features into a color wheel with no beginning and no end
For no forefathers face had ever looked like any they have ever known
I don’t think I’ve ever written more honest words than this
That to not speak of race is to kill a culture
And we as a society are internally hemorrhaging

Come let us sit at the right hand of truth and beside the left hand of spirit
A Deathless scale that portions us as an unbroken horizon against the Son
We are meant to stride frictionless
Like the bits of kaleidoscope glass we are
We are more than the sweeping commotion within our earthly sight
That covers our eyes like a stone fog
We are subtly and wind
Seized by different dusted vessels of infinite water and conducting light

How can one measure the worth of a garment when we are the threads?
We only see the edge of the loom of which we are attached
But too many see a thread of a different color as coming from a bolt of different cloth

24 years spotless of anger
19 years of wringing hands
Now I’ve set the table
We’ll have our fill before the end