They never did find a color to
match my eyes.
They never asked me what color I
wanted to be,
there was no right, only wrong…and I was wrong.
They had a problem with the way my skin was stitched
together at the seam, right between my stomach and my
fucking waistband, picked at it like surgeons
searching
for a lost glove, as they ripped at my soul,
I too got ripped apart.
They had a problem with the way my lips protrude from
my face, I bite them numb, bite my tongue, my words
no longer words, they are misconstrued etchings of
violence.
They had a problem with the way my black hair curled
over
like a drunk bitch on Friday nights, staring at the
way it lays motionless in the wind while they
whipped me around, scrubbed at my keratin
to erase my melanin, I’ve never felt so much pain
in my life. They cut at every inch, color me
vibrant red,
as the wounds began to bleed. They didn’t find the
answer,
I’m sorry for whatever I did to you, they began to color my
face
black
and
blue.
As I lay motionless on the table, they cut me open,
cracked my ribcage, color me agonizing, to see
if there was a difference in the way
my left lung cradled my aorta,
if I bled normal colors, if
they
were to puncture my lung in 33 different
places, would it ever inflate again.
They made me watch my back, both sides,
turning over my shoulder, color me
paranoid, I hear them
sharpening metal
to chain me up for their next experiment,
this time they want to see if I feel pain like
them, to test my mortality, I’m not some
urban legend, I too die when you take a knife
and bury it to the hilt, give it a twist to make sure
that last breath was gone before they marked
my time of death in blue
ink.
They used markers and pencils, pens and crayons
to try to change me but it was worthless, worth
less than the brown stain forever burnt across my
body, they turned me into a rainbow, into an
animal to play with, never did they color me
human.
And they never did find a color to
match my eyes.
~ Kai Alexander Means
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