creation's carnage

Dear God,

Why did you make me brown?

Didn't you give my people a crown?

Our lips are plump.

Our hair is coarse.

Our hips have hills and valleys like a golf course.

Our skin is the color of an unwanted chunk of coal.

No one wants to peer into the brown eyes towards our souls.

The bones in our face are naturally high.

Sometimes we look like we are smiling without knowing why.

The truth is that we have not smiled in a while.

Life has taken our image and ran a thousand miles.

Dear God,

The sight of all of the insecurity wounds my heart.

Little brown girls are told they are too dark or too light to be loved.

Those poor babies are scared of their own.

Their own hair.

Their own brows.

They have to wear makeup or they are not pretty.

They have to have relaxed hair or they are not professional.

Little brown boys believe that they have to be harsh. 

They are convinced that roughness is the only way to be a man.

They are raised by a brown woman then disrespect brown girls.

Walking down the street is a task that cannot be completed.

Not unless they want to be profiled as a harm or a threat.

Dear God,

I know this isn't the way you intended your creation to be.

Why is this the case for so many people who look like me?

I wish I could hold every brown child that believes a lie.

I wish I could tell them that they are as pretty as the sky.

Everyone was created in Your image, I must admit.

Please, just this once, can You show me how to omit the pain?

Omit the scars?

Omit the harm that's in my heart?

Please, God.

That's all I ask of you.