I Am and Not

I am a hyperpigmentation.

An overdose of melanin.

I am the aftermath of a merciless fire, and the darkness enveloping a starless night.

I am what was chopped and carved out of an ebony tree into existence.

And in my psyche, I am a cageless bird.

A cageless bird with no wings to beat, nor beak to sing

For freedom has its limits, I came to learn.

Yes, while the crimson coursing through the veins,

Through the arteries,

Through the capillaries

Of our being is of the same hue,

I am not what they are and they are not what I am.

And I am reminded of this. 

The toxic words are spewed from the parted lips of mental pollutants.

Contaminating the ozone layers of my mind and tainting the everflowing seas of my thoughts black.

Yes, black.

Like I am. 

For I have been conditioned to think it is and always will be equivalent to filth.

Lacerated, like the whips do the skin of my before-poeple when my dignity seeps out onto the floor from every open crevice. 

Like grains of sand through the chinks of a tattered, neglected sack.

Until I no longer am.