Pale skin. 

Long, straight hair.  

Green eyes. 

Slimmer nose.

Thinner lips. 

 

Everyday I wake up and these features haunt me because I thought they would make me happy.  

I thought I'd be safer. 

Less of a target.  

But I'm not happy.  

I may be physically safe now that my castle walls no longer fly a coloured flag but my decision to sit on this appropriated throne torments me. 

 

I am a ghost. 

A white sheet.

Full of oxymoronic beliefs and hypocritical thoughts.  

A blank canvas that can only be covered in blood, I mean, red ink.  

A shell, that on the outside seems perfect, but only knows pain. 

Torture. 

Annihilation. 

The tox-sins of the forefathers seeping through the surface, slowly corrupting my foundations. 

 

All that's left of me is a hollow Skeleton. 

Inner parts of who I should have been hearded into concentration camps, concentrating on gassing out of every part of me that has colour as it's origin. 

The legacy of my ancestors doused in bleach.  

And it's ironic that what I had once wanted so badly to build me up has left me a ruin, inside. 

 

I see everything in black and white. 

I miss colour. 

I miss flavour. 

I miss diversity. 

Acid washed exterior corroding until I no longer see colour, know flavour or understand diversity. 

The longer I reign in this depleting domain the harder I try to go back. To reverse my genotype through altering my phenotype. 

Injecting my lips, packing my hips, baking my skin to resemble who I should have been. Who I desire to be again. 

True royalty. 

But no matter how much money or power I have, no matter my position or importance in this kingdom, nothing changes who I am. 

Who I've allowed myself to become. 

And now I'm stuck seeing my life through these green eyes that are framed by limp hair, underlined by these lines I have to call lips.

 

I'm living uncomfortably in "paradise" because I look up at the sky where all the great kings of the past are and it dawns on me that I'll never be one of them. 

Unknowingly denouncing my claim by wanting to be other than what I am. I have forgotten who I am and so have forgotten my place in this circle of life and now God is punishing me in this cruel, distorted reality to remind me where I belong. 

 

God doesn't usually give you what you want. He gives you what you need. 

In my case he gave me what I thought I wanted so I could see for myself what I actually needed. 

To be with my people. 

To be like my people.

To go back to colour. 

To go back to black.