There
Are Certain Particular People
There
are certain particular people who will not accept help from individuals darker
than the trunk of a living tree. There are people who will be hanging from the
edge of a cliff, barely holding on by the tip of a protruding piece of metal,
and deny the tan hand that gives assistance. These people will let go of their
flimsy piece of safety and fall into the bottom of a pit containing multiple
rocks all in the shape of hammers and daggers that will crush and cut the skin.
One never knows if brown is contagious, better to die clear.
Still
there are others who will take the hand of an auburn gentleman and climb to
safety over the impending doom provided by the aforementioned cliff. Once they
have been helped by the brown gentleman they will look him condescendingly in
the eyes and focus only on the color of his dusty skin. They will thank the
gods that they are safe, not only from being crushed and cut by hammer and
dagger shaped stones, but also that they are light skinned. They will however
feel a sense of subtle guilt for betraying the grander notions held by
Euro-centric gentlemen in boxy suits and cry quietly to themselves.
There
are certain particular people, who will give a dark skinned baby to the thirsty
fangs of a flea ridden, biased full, and stocky wolf to be eaten at the wolf’s
leisure. The people of a village, without fully knowing why, motivated by a
subconscious desire to have their children succeed, will gather all the flour
in a 20 mile radius, splatter it in the village square and dance, twist, shout,
and squirm all over it. The people of this village will pray to unknown gods
and wish for something they dare not say out loud and can only say to
themselves while bathing in a far away river or while in a drunken state in
front of only the house’s chairs. The people of this village will give a dark
skinned baby to a wolf that is kept at the outskirts of this village but that
is regardless invited occasionally to feast on the small limbs of dark
offspring.
There
are certain particular people who will take the population of a city with skin
darker than the color of a mahogany tree silently swaying in the wind, and
place signs of apology around their neck.
These signs will state in very eloquent and very grammatically correct
words how the person wearing the sign of apology is sorry for something that is
not explicitly stated in the sign. The people who make the population wear said
signs will never mention them, just casually be aware of their presence and
attempt to stay away from them while at the same time being tactful and
respecting the fact that everyone is equal. That is their public theology.
The
people made to wear the signs of apology become so accustomed to them that they
breathe, jump, sing, and sometimes die without noticing them at all. However,
there are times when a brown person wearing the large and heavy sign bumps into
a small child or looks into a two way mirror while eating a deliciously cooked
ethnic meal and realizes, in a perhaps dumbfounded way that leaves the person
confused for two hours and thirty minutes, that he was wearing said sign for
nineteen years of his life. It is then up to the person wearing the sign of
apology to burn it or carry it; silently, fatherly, caringly around his auburn
colored neck.