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3. On Race and 'Other'

                                         On Race and 'Other'                                


It surely can't be the norm to be sat amongst foes within red brick walls.
Held hostage by the cruel and sterile retelling of one’s own historical racial trauma.

History, that shapes me.
Calcifies my bones.
Bleeds with me,
Cries with me too.

I am ‘other’, I know.
The outlier in your scattergram, the lowest possible curve,
No positive correlation to be marked with an X on the world.
The comparison that makes you think ‘Oh, I must have it better than them’ for they are the benchmark,
The bench beneath your feet.

But it’s me, I am them. 
Sat shrivelled and silent in the corner of the room.
And unlike Fanon’s deductions; I am of black skin with no mask.
I’ve ripped it off and buried it.
The armour still enrobes me, though.

I scribble notes frantically to prove that I am present, engaged and party to, not of; this cruel retelling.
I know I keep spacing out, but I can’t help it. 
The charts and statistics are boisterous beasts.
They call to me, point at me, limelight.

You know, my professor is kind. He is ‘woke’ and left aligned.
He pleads with the spectres to no avail.
He’s studied it by the book. High level lexis, aficionado and all!

Like it’s some sort of phenomena, some sea bed jewel waiting to be unearthed and understood.
But, I know it well.

Yet I am here and he is there. Schooling me.
My mellifluous conductor, conducting the melody of my soul.
I won’t let him get that close.
I guess I am the other.

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