You stand up there
with the most gorgeous curly black hair
you look out into the darkness,
the light shining on you
                                  and out of you.

I can hear your heart pounding from across the stage.

the world stops.
I stop.

           I can’t breathe.
I feel like I’m in a dream.
I look at you, you gorgeous thing.
                              and I feel you.
and I’m not used to feeling things.

And then,
               and then,
                               you open your mouth
                                                    to speak

you speak.
You speak with eloquence
you speak with passion.
you speak with a voice like velvet.

you speak
and the words chosen,
so carefully put together,
wrap around my throat

choke me

Slavery.
****.
******.
Prison.
*******.

All with a forked tongue.

Without thinking
I sink in my chair.

It will not be until later, when I am riding home in my car,
listening to the radio with the windows down,

that I realize
I am ashamed to be white.

I hate it.
I hate it that you woke up one morning angry
at people like me.

White, symbolically representing innocence
but you know **** well that we are ******* guilty
of everything.

White, symbolically representing purity
but our past is as ***** as the floor underneath the rug,
where we have swept all of our genocide and pain.

I hate it.
I hate them.

I can’t seem to understand how,
with this privilege that I was given at birth,
that I am more likely to be America’s standard of “successful”
although you are obviously more talented.

I can’t seem to understand how
White Middle Class
is better than
black gorgeous badass.

It’s ******* criminal.
I want to tear my hair out.
I want to **** the men
that have hurt you and your family.
I want to cry.

but instead,
(weak as I am)

I sit in my seat,
listening to your voice.
It causes me to shake.

I hate it.

The words etched into your black skin
Mean so much more to me
because they were cut and burned into you
with White words
White knives
White cigarettes
White privilege.

Like mine.

I hate it.

But, I have no way to escape it

Like you are unable to escape the pain
the pain that people like me
people with skin like mine
have inflicted upon you.

So, I sit there
like a naughty child

and I think about what I have done