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Tawanda Mulalu Sep 2014
She captioned his heart like she captioned
her own pictures of herself:

seemingly profound but obvious
and unrelated to whatever
touch-screen-camera-phone-app filter she used
to unshade her blackness,
his blackness,
their blackness; with digital
skin-lightening cream.

As if to be dark was a sin.

And so she edited herself
to forgive herself.
Because Jesus had eyes the colour of her contact lenses.
Blue.

Because to be holy is to be arbitrary.
Because to caption his heart like she captioned herself
was easier than to just ask for his soul
through a no make-up selfie.

        Or whatever else she thinks is actually her,
        but still isn't.
Admittedly, a lot of cameras really don't do justice to us darker types... But still.

A friend of mine wrote a kind-of-response to this poem. It's really clever:
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/878005/shades-of-pain/

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