Melanin

Melanin is my gift my weight and my tree bark,

god is life is good which gave me the earth.

I shine gold when i dance, outside,

i sweat caramel and cinnamon.

My ancestors are brown,

black and olive,

coffee & cream.

We hunt rainforest,

conjure spirit in brews.

though a plague, they carried me.

Our ancestors survived war, slavery, wealth,

carving codes into our bones,

singing hymns foreign to church makers.

My ancestors made those churches,

they bade those ships and met on the other side of the world the pieces of me left behind. Our ancestors are turning against each other in time, take me on a journey and fall in love with you again,

mirror me,

she is my mother’s mother thrown ages ago, dark as the soil, brilliant and glimmering like the stained glass in his spanish church. “Take me,” She pulled his hand to her heart, “here.” He Took her.

Her mother was took, away from a sheria tribe, I don’t recall how to say, a nation of star people, a rich coffee hue in her eyes made him sweat, he was dripping blood as he sweat over her, claiming his that he could never touch. Her child became

thrown over time many layers,

my mother’s mother now, her mother; wool in ireland, father dark as soil.

Again

we repeat, until we have the whole and, sip cafe with cream; cafelatte,

nonna makes me cafe late, with love,

a magic cream whipped in sugar, then cafe.

Abuela has her watering can full, blooming red roses in a foggy bayside creek.

where was your mothers mother, ages ago?

mother mary made us like your land, our colors are the history that created our egg and seed.

Mother mary?

yes she is brown like this soil and comes from the first lands,

we some came from the stars and others from the depth of earth,

there we took her colors and made ourselves like her,

though some, they shine like the night sky herself,

her son,

dark as the laywork where water and a moon shine so bright over me,

who holds me,

at my core,

the blank space between each atom, is full,

is,

a color.

…

“My melanin is my blood,” She laughed and ate the green apple slice. sweet and tangy.

“your color never fades,” he added pointing to a hallway in the trees that tunneled into an abyss.

“white shirts never remain white,” She replied laughing with a sweet drip of juice driving down her neck.

“there is not white,” Added Clarion who rarely spoke so when he did it created a gust of attention inside us, then i frowned a tad as I didn’t understand what he meant.

Tarfur looked back to the abyss he pointed too, tensed up, quieted and shuddered to say in a whisper, “you guys, something is coming”

We all look at a quickening figure emerging from the shadows almost as if appearing from the workings of nothingness.

The darkness provides

A robed man who wore a heavy parfum emerged from the tree cover softly floating towards us. His essense met already as a sweet aroma of rose, maple sap, black pepper and cinnamon,

He casted no shadow but announced his entrance along with a sound of brass chimes and wood beads tinkling together like rhythmic rain as they draped his swaying breast moving to,

he approached,

feet away he stood as a beautiful dress to the trees and grass that surrounded our circle. He held a wooden staff and behind my blurred vision i could see his smiling face as he spoke,”white is a false god of race and isn’t a real thing, tools used to mark sad games and poor excuses;”

he paused shaking his head emoting to a burst of energy he yelled casting us all back, pointing directing at Clarion’s forehead his voice echoed vast, “all towers fall!”

His demeanor softened instantly and he came to a calm quelling whisper,

he steps closer,

“reveal the fools behind the white masks, reveal them all!”

Clarion, then, like a robot, terrifying me, spoke to him, “white is but my bones & those we all share.”

breaking the trance, Tarfur speaks half reaching for his daggar in sheath, “what is it you speak wizard?”

He turned “Soon there will be a day where there is a new false god, his race will be a sheet over his pale grieving face and he will cry with his bloodthirsty ways.”

We all looked at each other admiringly and amused in confusion except for Calrion stood looking at this man intently,

The wizard nodded, “ I will be there then to meet you, it will be a dark time, you’ll revel for the days again you have now, the days of wizards and dragons, oh now you may cry,” he began to laugh and tear up, “then you’ll laugh and say I would die to fight a dragon, I would die to go back to the days where sorcerers fly,”

he sighed as if resolving a personal matter, as clear as day I saw a sparkle of light flicker around him,”oh to be three travellers in a forest, what a gift…soon you’ll be wrapped in taxes.” Shaking his staff at us like my grandmother did when I’d eat her treats too early.

I tear up a bit.

Calrion took his hand to shake the wizard, without a warning or proper break, the wizard vanished, we all gasped and pulled back, Tarfur screamed.

I hadn’t seen it before, I heard about this once in a story when I was young but to see it, was alarming. There was no smoke, no cool magical affect, it was instant,

one second he was there, one second he was erased from existence,

completely gone.

Tarfur looked spooked all the way through yesterday, Calrion sat casually and smiled to himself biting his sweet pastry.

I was stunned silent and amused, somehow.

“what are taxes?” Tarfur spoke, we all laughed for a full three minutes….I take my breath and finish the apple i stopped chewing the moment that ghost arrived.

“Calrion,” I asked. “what was that?”

Clarion wiping his wet cheeks smiled, “I think in a long time, we will find out….”

…

earth,

2,000,000 years later

…

A man is fighting in a war, beside him he has to say goodbye to his friends hand. He isn’t going to be able to forgive this any day soon. There, at the corner of his life, he cannot see it, a dark figure stands with him.

One day he reads the paper sitting against his leather, the smell of this with a faint cigarette somehow is sweet, something in the room.

He looks up to a mirror over the mantle and hears the ticking clock. His heart feels someone near, somehow so familiar but far away. He sees in his minds eye, his friend smiling, before. For a full 3 minutes, he cries. His heart is stretched through his throat, his friends smiling face, in his minds eye. His paper is now wet. He smiles as he notices a lighter feeling inside him. Sweet amber smell, he looks to the corner of his room, there he swears he saw something,

I saw you…

a million yards away i am dancing in a chamomile field with my mother, she is laughing and crying from the jubilee. I am drunk from coffee jittery as hell and equally sick from joy. What a funny thing, the grass fields of awe, the cashmere wind is gentle touch to a warm sunshine. I love you. Together we are awake form their war, and soon enough, our candels across the may fields carry a new day for them too.

fours hours later the air is sending shedding the weight of time, a sauce cooking, Onion faints into garlic, father in the distance, behind him they all stir, stirring my matter,

make me a supper that will fill my core.

The sauce is red and ripe,

my color.

…

My colors are woven ties to lands across my vantage. I cannot imagine what it took for us to survive. Do you consider it, what it took for you to survive, what your colors are? What your skin pulsates, the memory of your fathers father ages ago,

his mother?

from every color, every fruit, every race,

we radiate a story

vast and epic,

Divine;

dark indigo, black brown, speckled ginger spice, cream peach, olive cake, chocolate mousse,