Today, I am sharing a new poem. Poetry is a beautiful outlet to be honest and vulnerable without writing down your every thought. Thank you for reading.

As a child, I looked like everyone around me;
I was what many longed to be: fair skin, blonde hair, blue eyes.
In this sea of sameness, how could I know difference?
And even though the world has always been a collage of differences,
it has rarely felt that way.
Difference has never been as celebrated as sameness; isn’t sameness
some pathway to utopia?
If I am different than you because of exterior pieces, parts, bits, slices
I have no concern
Our blood is all red, our bones all white.
My concern is
the differences beneath
that make us see
the world so distinctly.

History has already been written and repeated, are we not any wiser?
But history or wisdom don’t fuel us now; it’s fear
But it’s always been fear – fight or flight –
The villain just keeps changing.
Maybe we’re the villain;
maybe we’ve never been united.
Maybe we were never great, at least not great for all of us,
Because you cannot give me a time of equal, of sameness bending into difference
A time when we were not sinners or evil or murderers or lesser than.

Standing on the shores of this land, what can we see? What’s in the clouds that make us chosen? And what do those on the other side see?
I am under no delusion that our ideals match our actions. And it did not start today, this has been burning for hundreds of years.
And why wouldn’t we want to lock our door? Not to keep out but to keep safe within.
Then the question comes, or surely will come one day – is it keeping out or keeping in?

As a child, my world was small.
I knew only what I was taught. I saw only what was like me. But I knew differences,
I knew fair skin, blonde hair, blue eyes were not everyone’s image.
And I grew and I traveled and I read and I learned.
And I experienced the worst of it all because differences don’t save you from pain.
I still have that fair skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. I’m still the image of sameness.
But I am roaring and pleading, I am different.