Black Noise.
I don’t know what is to be looked at as whole and full. I don’t know what it means to be fully human. I am not aware, allowed to be aware of what it means to be free. To be able to experience simple humanity. I am not present in every part of my true existence. I check each aspect of my compartmentalized self, one at a time, day after day- to sew myself up, to patch my existence together: firstly for my survival, and secondly for your comfort-
I am made aware of my dehumanization on every level of my consciousness, in my dreams, in my classrooms, in my car. your consciousness, in your dreams, in your classrooms, in your car. Every time my heart takes a beat I am vibrantly pulsed with the blessing you’ve given me to breathe. Yet, My heart still being called inhuman-
Each speckle of reclamation I take back from this “nonexistence,” each thought I claim as mine and not yours. I cherish and I try to swallow. To transubstantiate your decimation being championed by my ancestors. I reclaim the names you erased, and I proclaim to feel their loss when one day you acknowledge it as if it is fresh and new.Because it is still fresh and new. I decide to hold onto their my pain. Our existence is not to be desecrated. It is to be understood and to remain and to be reclaimed for you and for us. It is to be fully loved.
I warn you. We are not scorned we are burned. Our skin has peeled, and our scars are never healed. But we don’t wear masks. We never hide. We can’t. We still feel. We still see. We still hear. That is how we know we are real, humans.
-Written by someone who sheds real, human tears.
November 7th, 2016. I was 23 years old; now I'm 30. Typos et al, this writing still holds so much of how I exist. Much has shifted and much remains.
