A free verse, amongst each other, we too will one day be.

I am your average everyday girl
Who’s world has flipped upside-down
Yes its progress, but with sluggish pace.
My best friend and I both attend the same school
But are separated by the officious signs
Guiding each race, herding us like oblivious cattle.
My hopes are high and yet walking through the halls
Everyone is tense, edgy, and anxious like awaiting a battle.

I am your average everyday girl
Who lives in Little Rock, Mississippi
Attends an integrated school
With average everyday kids
Who are discouraged to speak
To the boys and girls of different skin.
But I can see through the façade
Of this peachy town, like paper thin.

I am your average everyday girl
Who has a family that loves me.
Who has dreams of my own
And believes in the god above me
Who takes pride in her pie making
And takes care of her little brother
Who enjoys literature and poetry
And likes to twist to tunes on the radio.

I am your average everyday girl
Yet to the others I am an alien.
Though I confess the first few days
I thought of them the same way
Like they were this foreign colony of honey bees
That plan to whip and lash their stinging words.
This is what I had expected, that first day
They were but somewhat peaceful and nervous creatures
Just being part of an opportunity everybody equally deserves.
Not everyone settles well with the strangers, or thinks like I do.
But for the first week, granted there were some spiked nerves.
Perhaps this isn’t the time, and maybe not the place
But tell me, by my words, who do you imagine? what's my race?
Can you guess?

I am your average everyday girl
And I often scoff at the sign that reads “Colored.”
The irony is so blatant and nearly tangible; if I could eat it,
It would be embarrassingly pungent like fresh garlic.
The sign, it reads “colored” and yet the people who fix
Those signs up in the first place, are individuals who
Are tragically deceived to believe that because we are
Of different shade of skin, this is how life is.
Their black and white views of this world
Have been taken far too literally if you ask me.