Distress Call for the Browns | Teen Ink

Distress Call for the Browns

January 5, 2017
By TheWritingMillenial SILVER, Dubai, Other
TheWritingMillenial SILVER, Dubai, Other
5 articles 0 photos 0 comments

This is a distress call
To the seeding soul beyond the color
Run, they have caught the scent
Of hues that make you smaller

 

Smaller in competence, in potential they
Chastised on how you bleed brown
The melanocytes that cluster beneath your skin
Suffers their admonishment, as does your breakdown

 

Cackling with privilege, they denigrate
Whilst your skin seems to grow in its darkness
Your heart wrenches a little tighter
Galling at the repressed cage that constricts your rage

 

No, don’t gall but chafe at the brown
The earth you wear on your skin
As a robe of ineffable strength
With the power of the mellifluous violin

 

There will always be that strength
The nefarious one that pulls you back to the soil
But remember you are iridescent
A masterpiece the crisp color of your farming fathers’ toil


It is your talisman, your passport
To redolence and panacea
You walk as a memoir
Of diligent cultivators of Asia

 

An identity threatened by unsolicited claims
Prejudicial calls meant to break you
Remember it is an epoch
In the epic of how you grew.


The author's comments:

This poem, like every other I've penned down, comes from a long-suppressed song that thumps in my heart everyday I wake up to a world that sneers at anything with more color on their skin than the warmth in its heart. 

Being a young girl of color, hailing from a Muslim Pakistani background, and a citizen of the millenial generation, my aim is to self-efacingly glorify the diversity of the human race, regardless of their skin tone. It is a stereotype that yearns to be broken, and we need to show support now if we wish to see a united world tomorrow. Or, at least, one that does not denigrate on the basis of color. It's all in your hands. x


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