#111 - Modern Segregation

Today’s words: Amend, Elite, Use, Define

Word count: 194

Completion time: 27 minutes

Summary: Representation from a young age matters.

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She knows how to talk

But not how to use her voice

She knows how to walk

But not how to prevent others

From walking over her

She knows how to add, subtract, divide

But the collision caused by the division

Of black versus white is something

No child can fight...alone

Children will copy what they see

Like to be whatever stars are on TV

But it’s the elite who choose who to use

On the big screen in Vue.

...Take 2

I’ll amend what I said

and begin with this instead:

When that child came home one night

She said, “Mummy, I want to be white.”

“Child, why?”

“White people are beautiful.”

Who put this in her head?

Who sat down with her on their lap

And told her she wasn’t all that?

No-one needed to.

It doesn’t need to be explicit

For someone to exhibit self-loathing

If beauty is all around and it’s wearing white

The other colours don’t shine as bright

The dictionary can define ‘beauty’ and it won’t have a race

But nearly every beautiful face we see looks the same to me

And barely any will look like me

#107 - Monkey

Today’s words: Sausages, Monkey, Ambivalent, Hearty

Word count: 117

Completion time: 17 minutes

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You’ll find me on the monkey bars

I’ll have a banana between my teeth

And my dress will have a roll of fabric

Cellotaped to the skirt

Because I am a monkey



I can be as hearty as I want

I can say I want ten sausages

For breakfast

And no-one will find that weird

Because kids are silly



Kids are allowed to be ambivalent

Kids are allowed to have no direction

Allowed to run around in circles

And collapse wherever they like

Because they have no responsibilities



So that’s why you’ll find me in the park

On the climbing frame

Holding my head high with pride

As I cross the monkey bars

For the ninth time

#90 - For A Black Girl

Today’s words: Flange, Tibia, Scrabble, Special

Word count: 421

Completion time: 30 minutes

Summary: A little girl realises early in her life that being black is not the same as being white

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Gracie would sometimes wonder no-one in school that looked like her. It didn’t occur to her until she was around eight-years-old, when someone in the art lesson had asked for a ‘skin colour’ colouring pencil. Her fingers shot to the light pink implement and she took a look at the skin on the back of her hand; if that was ‘skin colour’, then what about her skin? And, how did she know which colour the boy had meant? Who taught her that? It certainly hadn’t been her teachers.

When she reached eleven, she was sent to a private school for high achievers (“special school for my special girl” her mum would sometimes sing). The building was beautiful – light grey stone surrounded by patches of ivy, royal blue roofs, and a cream and grey pebbled driveway that led up to the heavy oak doors like a red carpet to an awards ceremony. She felt grand, and yeah, pretty darn special...but that didn’t last very long.

Once again, Gracie was one of the only black children in school, and the only one in most of her classes, but this time, the kids were very aware of it.

It started off with looks, whispers behind hands, fake smiles, a small, easy diffusible scrabble in the yard, until one day she was elbowed at the top of a staircase which caused her to fall. Hard. Not only did she break her tibia, but her arm and a few teeth, too.

The last thing she heard before unconsciousness took over was that she should go back to the jungle and join the ugly flange of baboons where she belonged.

Bruises fade, cuts heal, bones fuse back together...but those words stayed with her until adulthood, occasionally making a prominent appearance when she descended a flight of stairs or scrutinized her flared nostrils in the mirror of her dresser.

When she recovered, she wished more than ever to be white; to be white meant to be normal, beautiful...something that she thought she could never achieve. She could google ‘How to make skin whiter’ and, ‘Bleach for black skin’ all she wanted but she would never look like the girls that everyone seemed to find most beautiful.

When mainstream society tells you that you’re unattractive, or that you’re attractive with ‘for a black girl’ as a disclaimer...it can make you feel like you’ll never be good enough.

You feel you’ll never amount to anything unless you shed your skin and pray for a lighter one to take its place.

#50 - Dear Me

Today’s words: Standing, Commemorate, Pleasant, Chalkiness

Word count: 486

Completion time: 46 minutes

Summary: Sometimes you just need to thank the person you were for being who you are today

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I am standing in the same place, looking up at the same walls, inhabiting the same body as when I was thirteen years old. Breathing in, I can’t smell a thing, but I know that every inch of this room smells like me, past and present; if you could bag this room up and send it to a lab, you could clone me, body and soul. I kneel down onto a pile of stolen books that are still stacked by the chest of drawers and imagine that I’m 5ft 2” again. Yes, four inches do make a difference.

I didn’t realise it for a while, but now I know...I use this room to commemorate you – I never took those Nirvana posters down, never painted over the jagged lines you draw with a compass when you were angry, never gave away those stuffed toys and Barbie dolls. This room has remained the room of a thirteen-year-old girl that, thinking back, was a little shit.

You were everything I find uncomfortable: whiny, attention-seeking, sympathising with the bad guys because they were ‘cute’, using boyfriends for material possessions, claiming to be more fucked up than everyone else even though you had no idea what anyone else was going through. How pleasant. You would stand there and show off your scars as proof that the last 13 years of your life had been hell. You had no idea what ‘hell’ felt like and I can say that because I did know what you were going through, I am you!

Remember how much you wanted to stand out? So random, so creepy, so misunderstood, people would vom lol if they knew what was going on inside your head. How do you know that what you thought about wasn’t the same as what everyone else thinks about? I bet you all your pocket money that your demons’ fire could be extinguished by people you walked to school with every day; and how could you disprove that? How could you prove that you were the worst?
 

Recall the time you boasted about being depressed to anyone who would listen? That you had this big unrealistic plan to go to America once you were 18, buy a gun and kill yourself ‘like Kurt Cobain did’?

Well that’s it, you got your wish, you’re gone. 

All that’s left is a chalk outline of who you used to be. I choke a little on the chalkiness as I revisit the past and come face to face with you. 

You don’t recognise me but I’m all too familiar with you. 

Your eyes look right through me but all I can see is you. 

I don’t exist but you are the reason that I am alive.

Sometimes you need to crawl through shit to find the light; so, thank you.

One last look around the room and I switch off the light, closing the door behind me.

Goodnight.