sometimes I think about race and I start panicking and sweating.

I hear a dog bark, and I start praying.

I see people and I start weeping.

Where do we go anymore?

Where do I find some hope?

I am the least of them yet I sweat the most.

Here I lie.

Here I lie.

A testament to a father’s hatred of his himself, and a mother who was lost to time.

So much was lost, but what remained was indelibly marked both on my skin, inside the soft parts of me that tore forever those quiet winter nights when she was fast asleep instead of keeping me safe, and in my mind eye.

I was a testament to all that he hated in himself. All his girls were.

Hindu names but faces that betrayed origins that made him hate himself far more than we ever could.

or wanted to.

I am the least of them.

Yet here I stand. I sit.

I lie.

I sleep.

Here I am.

There is he is somewhere.

I hope out of the two of us its me that sleeps dreamless.

Let me die just for tonight so I may finally rest well.

If I promise to wake the next morning to work again may the devil take my forsaken soul.

Let the white man wear it as a flimsy garb stained in my blood.

Just so I can sleep tonight, a life lived long worn.

I want to wake up in a hotel. Back packed by my bed.

I want my hair to be unnaturally soft to the touch and my head filled with the knowledge of driving and a plan.

Maybe I have a job that takes me across Turtle Island. Maybe its something simple but needing to be done.

Maybe its so dull it forces me to relax.

Maybe it forces me to find the dark spaces to run in.

sleep