Savage
Savage
Why am I called a violent savage, uncivilized, unteachable, three-fifths of a person?
Yet, it was I who was obnoxiously chased by strange men who invaded my homeland.
As soon as their feet stepped on the soil of my homeland, sensing danger, bewildered and frightened, I ran for my life.
The taste of freedom in my soul was my motivation.
They spotted me, and they hunted me as a hunter hunts his game.
Running with an urgency to escape, my mind whirling like a hurricane thinking about my village, my siblings, my mother and my father.
I am but a young man perplexed, running and gasping for breath.
Finally, I collapsed from exhaustion, not able to escape the clutches of the strange men.
With the look of hostility on their faces they surrounded me to prevent me from escaping.
They were armed with guns, whips, long knives, shackles and chains.
When I tried to escape, they brutally struck me with a whip.
I cried out in my native tongue from a pain I have never felt before.
Violently, they beat me down until all the fight in me was gone.
When they had broken me, they chained my wrists and shackled my ankles.
They dragged me to a ship that was waiting by the river for the catch of the day.
I was cast into a small crowded room in the hull of that massive ship, horrified at what my eyes beheld.
Hundreds of my own people, male and female, young and old, shackled and chained to one another.
My soul groaned within me because, freedom had been viciously taken away.
Therefore, I now understand what a savage is.
Copyright © Doretha Wright | Year Posted 2019
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