There's a mask I use to present myself to white friends saying things, like, "Oh Em G,"

and shit like, "Yeah, Totally."

All just because this mask is the people pleaser. The "let me strip my skin of melanin to make you comfortable" type mask.

The persona that enlightens whites with ideas like: maybe, black people can talk right.

This is the same mask I use to maneuver through the majority pool in majority of institutes, only to find myself drowning and choking in white, chlorine-filled classes, as I  gasp and grasp for the grasses, since: it's the only thing of color.

This mask, in its folds, holds the filters that channel things that typical white beings say, and that I, in my always playing the race card, should just "get over".

My mask provides protection from those powerful white weapons that shoot black, branding bullets engraved with words to degrade me.

The mask gives me one extra life in this oppressive game.

One life with blood that runs back to ancestors who carried columns on their bare, black backs to build, the Romes of America: an empire I would not be given the privilege to invest in.

But as I hide behind all curtains and closed doors, there's the little black being that was called savage and beast, that's clawing at the insides of my gut, slowly trying to burst free. With blood boiling over, she's realizing it's the last chance to shatter the porcelain mask that makes her lose herself.