Skin

As I stand in the shower washing my coily hair, seeing my brown skin, I think of how unheard of this simple task must have been, to my ancestors, my kin How they probably couldn’t shower with clean water, much less hot, all because white people told them “we are better, and you are not” I think of how they tortured them for centuries and stole their kids away, how they made them pick cotton in the fields, every single day I think of how they murdered us: lynched and bombed and burned, of how they made it a sort of game, giving each other “turns” I think of how they do it now, police brutality, how they choke us to death with their knees on our necks, even as they hear “I can’t breathe” I think of how they tell us to get over it: “it was so long ago,” but they want us to remember the holocaust, the Jews it happened to I think of how they look at us, with such scorn and obvious disgust, just because we exist, just because we’re US I think of how they push past me in the store, because I’m an inconvenience in their day; nothing less, nothing more, without an “excuse me” or a “sorry,” because they’re too good for an apology And as I stand there in the shower, a Black person, thinking of my kin, I think of how white people hate us for something as natural as our skin