All Wisdom Is Not Taught in Your School

The white cotton mu’umu’u we have to wear for graduation, scratches and itches and strangles our necks, our arms, our wrists. We are enshrouded for the celebration. Our faces and hair, dark, medium, light, a rainbow of humanity, awaiting the next step of our sublimation. We sing praises to the past and sing hope for the future, but they are lies we taste, ash on our tongues. We have been indoctrinated in the very culture that wants nothing to do with us but we haven’t learned that truth. Not just yet. We pray to a god that tried to change us to fit his image, our love our openness our welcome, converted to hate, selfishness, exclusion. We drift like ghosts across the stage, our ancestors, shadows hiding in the corners, telling us no, don’t, free yourself, protest. The irony never crossing our minds as we exchange one white shackle for another.