To Dye a Griffin

Everything starts out as a cause, something to fight for, to believe in. A cause is something that every human being needs because it gives them the will to live and survive in a bloodthirsty world of crooks and corporate raptors. It burns within us, a flame of desire and justification, the soothing quench of thirst or ease of hunger pangs. I had a cause, it was beautiful, as most causes start out to be.
They are not like us, their skin is dark and they are the work of the devil, carefully crafting the downfall of white civilization. That is why we rip our books from their hands and our education from their minds. That is why we treat them like dogs, throw sticks and clumps of dirt at their scrawny backs, and mock them in hidden fear.
Yet, what if they could be just like us, a hidden sense of humanity slowly willing itself to reveal to a sensitive and often cruel world. The darkened mothers clutch their children in mirroring affection of ours, and the darkened fathers surly feel a sense of pride at their own son’s achievements just as my father felt for me. When they run their fingers across lavish silks and gently fondle the smooth surface of expensive jewelry, they feel the same longing desire that I feel and ponder the same dreams of success and wealth. I can befriend them just as easily as one could befriend any other human being, and yet I cannot sympathize with or truly know their pain because I have never felt the cold shoulder of neglect. Nor have I felt the stinging venom of racism.
My audience can’t possibly understand my motives to understand my friends and neighbors, nor why I shed my lighter skin for the darkened hue of rich culture. They can’t possibly understand why I chose to burn my skin with sun lamps, twist taste buds with revolting pills, and slowly dye my skin with writing ink just to truly be able to say, "I’m sorry." To say those two words with the passion and true understanding, which I sought, would truly be gratifying, that would be a life’s achievement.
It is not that I am not proud of my own heritage and culture, but I am not proud of the fact we so easily mock them without the knowledge of what it is truly like to feel such bitter hatred for such a small factor of life.
My skin holds the delicate hue of darkness, and my mind is now ripe with knowledge of how they live even my body holds the scars of truth. A single scar running across my neck from a rope which tried to hang me, the bitter words of colleagues as they didn’t recognize me while dealing stinging accusations and swift blows.
But every hint of fragile beauty comes at a price; I now wield the pains of my forages, for my skin holds something far deadlier than hate or racism. I can’t feel the constant smear of death coursing throughout my body, but I know it’s there. Like a mocking plague my cancer is slowly eating the years from my life, twisting my fate from a knowledgeable being into a doomed individual. I have learned to accept and truly sympathize with the plight of others which I could not before… but as I clutch my bed sheets in building angst, I wonder for a fleeting moment… will anyone ever be able to truly understand my painful journey? Years from now, I hope that we can live side by side in peaceful harmony, without the fear of another color.
Peace comes at the cost of many deaths, but death in the end is only a slow journey towards something far more beautiful then a mortal’s existence.