Dark Skin Child

They said her skin reminded them of their past, the one they wished to forget

The colour of the coals they carried, the whip that raided scars on their backs

The dark nights that lengthened their labour, their sadness

She had been born into a stagnant time, in which your skin was your crown, at times, a crown made of thorns, piercing her heritage with persecution

Pain was always associated with her colour, it brought tears to her mother, she swallowed them like bitters

Her aunt had told her that when she was born, people mourned silently with their faces

‘she be of dark skin child, darker than any we seen with the eyes’ .. they murmured

Giving gifts of sympathetic glances to a woman already in pain from labour 

All the children started work at the age of two, helping with their tiny hands

They had mistaken it for play, they enjoyed running around the rows of cotton plants

She would hear songs about redemption on the fields, soul soothing comforting songs about a lord that saved people, yet she saw a light skinned person on the portraits, with the skin tone of the man who would take her mother away and spread her thighs in front of her

Her conflict was like a birth mark, only it covered her whole body

They looked at her as a painful reminder of their daily struggles, inner battles that they dared not mention in words. They feared death, but she didn’t. Her life already resembled death

Most days she sat at the barn, milking cows, seeing how white the milk was, wishing her skin was the same, so she could smile, laugh and be greeted with the same happiness they showed to their master’s eyes. She was only 10 years old, but her existence seemed longer, her eyes, frail with sadness, the spark of innocent life, gone, forgotten to be emphasized

She was taught to hate her skin, herself. And that is what she did. Nobody was there to show her how the dark soils were moulded into beautiful clay pots to collect water, how the coals gave life to food.  How her skin was of ancient goddesses that were worshipped in early times

All they ever did was spit on her with looks of detest, as if she could hear every woman praying that their daughters never become such a tone, full of damnation and scrutiny, when the very same people that hated her, had a similar tone. She felt inferior like they did, they fed her a poison they claimed was running in her veins.

The last they saw of her, was in her writing, when she mentioned how she was going to town, to beg to be lynched. As her own kind, had killed her at birth.