THIS IS NOT A REVIEW

Brother, listen to the ancestors; something bad is coming. Run!

Familiar. Oh so familiar. I’ve been there before I’m sure of it. Looking through your eyes but they’re mine. They’re looking at you, but I feel their gaze. They’re watching us shop, eat, walk, breathe: consuming our every move.

Studying us like an exhibit at a museum, taking notes, inspiration, color. The prized piece up for auction placed on a checkered board of their making. Manipulating our perception of ourselves, each other, and this world to keep us strapped in a place where they left us: sunken, frozen in history among bones, whips, and chains, expected to stay present while time marginalizes pain.

What is a smile if not a veil? A fallacy hiding indifference and ignorance to the roles played every single day in the tightening of an invisible noose. Uncomfortable, like a tie that’s too tight. Horrified of your intentions as you stir your tea, hypnotizing, as you convince us that we have nothing to fear when we see those red and blue lights.

You need to run far! Listen to the truth. Something bad is coming!

One world, two realities, a disconnect for which neither is at fault, but both are to blame. Different but the same. More like them and less like you. Less like them and more like you. Denied and perpetuated. Hypocrisy like a stain in our brains washed away and replaced by a version of the times that invalidates the creeping feeling that we are not safe as we are.

Run! Run! To save yourself, listen to the ancestors!

Familiar. Oh so familiar. I’ve lived this before I’m sure of it. I sat at that table with her family and watched as the masks slid from side to side. The smiles fade as the truth becomes harder to hide. They want to cut me open and play with what’s inside.

“I told you not to go to that white girl’s house!” screams the voice in my mind, an echo of the masses vindicating paranoia, stretching the distance between us like a vast desert. Tense like a buck in headlights. Pleasantry deceives those perched upon privilege.

There is only so much one can take, so never forget, a buck has horns that can seal your fate.

Dinner is done. Blood cakes the white curtains and fire pumps through my veins as I rest my head in the rubble, finding solace in the thought, “at least they didn’t try to make me a freaky sex slave.”

RATING: “A”