Toni Morrison wrote the Bluest Eye, but why does Kanye wear blue contacts at the Met Gala in front of the whole world who have their phones out, ready to snap a photo?
The window to that life of fortune is half-way open and all the doors to success in this townhouse are closed shut, so it doesn’t make sense for me to cook these eggs and hash browns, when no one is coming over to eat and to share the blueprint with me.
Because, I don’t know whether to squat down and roll the dice outside in the alleyway,
or keep climbing the fire escape until I reach the clouds of heaven.
The air-conditioner rattles and clanks nothing but old air. And it’s a heatwave outside.
Bodies sizzling on the pavement like the pancakes baking on the frying pan.
Pop told me the white man is unholy, and then he goes and wears a cross around his neck.
Radio, oh radio, oh radio; if it keeps playing the same, **** rap and pop songs,
My mind will become a turn-table.
No scratches.
Just the crisp sound of decay.
Please be quiet Pop, let me watch this program.
Control me another day.
Thank you for the heartache.
What happened? Is that what you’re asking me?
A lot did, lots of stuff.
You want me to tell you?
I don’t know if you want me to excavate this ish from my mental,
Or tell it to you in the raw and gritty.
You sure?
Okay then.
I remember the white bag covering my head while my eyes were open wide, closing my vision and shrouding me in my own blackness. The brackish, heavy water from the James River rushed and flowed over stones and broken branches as my friends hummed gospel hymns to unite us across this journey of baptism. We walked barefoot along the muddy ground filled with tiny rocks and snapped twigs and followed one another, our chests convulsing from the anxiousness of the unknown, arms drooped into a V with one hand over the other to keep our fingers from shaking. When brotherman put his palm on my chest, I could feel my heart exploding with excitement, as he dipped my body gently backwards. Immediately, freezing water flooded the bag and my head became soaking with a coldness that was like a flat of the hand striking my tender cheek. When I emerged from the shallows of the dark river, still dripping with water, my lungs expanded as I gasped for air, for relief, and for an opportunity to restore my tarnished soul, a soul that is inside of a body, the same body that sits on this couch with lumpy cushions, staring at a TV screen showing black boys getting murdered in cold blood and not a ******* thing I can do about it, and why worry about a cycle of bad news, when I can just buy these clean, white boat shoes. But, I remember the coldness of the river as I stood knee-deep in rolling water, which seeped into my red shirt and my shorts, my feet caked in mud. Glad, I took my kicks off. Paid way too much money to mess up my new boat-shoes and that’s real **** to be perfectly honest.
Don’t worry Pop, I used my own hard-earned money to pay for these.
So I’m white now?
Would it make a difference if I switched from laces to Velcro?
If I took a brush and painted a black swoosh over the sailboat?
If I wore tall white tube socks instead of going barefoot in these shoes,
Then would that change your opinion?
Okay, the silent treatment, right, lay it on me.
Wow, now you’re making hand-gestures.
Talk too much? Me talk too much?
This house talks too much! The floor creaks and the faucets leak.
The shutters clatter and clang from the wind.
Pop, all I want to do is go outside, cuz I’m going crazy right now.
The sun is shining a bright light over this house,
And I know I can’t see a **** thing.
Because my eyes have yet to
Fully
Open
Up
Wrote this for a friend to be used in a screenplay; the character is supposed to be a young, black male dealing with whiteness and identity.
