The color peace?
The color of death
After the blood has left the body
after the heart has stopped.
I am dead, I have no claim
Tall, stretching for more
but without roots,
without roots I fall.
My past
my heritage
white-washed.
A past that most cannot find
behind the layers and layers
and strokes and strokes
of white.
But I do.
I do
and I carry it on my back
I carry it in my eyes,
I carry it in my feeble attempts for forgiveness.
Your land, your family, your life
I have taken without thought.
Your ways, your customs I have diluted to make you like
me.
colorless
white-washed
I carry shame
I humbly carry this shame.
To be me
is to stand privileged.
But I stand burdened
by the forgetting of people.
Of my people?
No, of my skin.
It forgets
It forgets the beat my heart skipped,
the past my memory will not recall
the time when I was dead.
I live under a heritage of death
