Weeping For My Old Hometown
by Stephanie MeslerI weep.
My old hometown is on fire.
It is burning with the fury of a thousand mothers whose sons were shot just for living in dark skin.
It burns with the fear of old men who once held power just because, but are now told they must earn a place around a table that used to be rectangular.
It burns with the passion of the ignorant who follow whoever makes them feel smarter than...well...smarter than they are.
I weep.
My old hometown is shattered glass and broken beams.
I watch on my phone as my old friends make themselves shields.
They use their white skin
(not really white at all, BTW, more like slightly pink)
They use their pink skin to get between the men in blue
(not really blue at all, BTW.
Except where they are swathed in camo, like they think they are going to war on Main Street, these men in blue are covered in black, head to toe, even the weapons strapped to their belts are shiny black.
They look like they wanna join Vlad’s Alpha Group and fight for domination of a continent. Their horses are black and so are the clubs they use to beat back resistance.)
My old friends use their pink skin to get between the men in blue that isn’t blue and the people of color.
And they really are colorful, these people; their skin comes in many shades of brown, from tortilla to umber and everything in between.
I watch as the men in blue that isn’t blue open fire, sending rubber bullets into the shins and bellies and faces of the pink.
The rubber bullets bring my old friends to the ground where they are trampled as the men in blue that isn’t blue move on the people of color, raising their black cannons and firing orange gas at the crowd.
All the while, even as they go blind and fall, they chant: “No justice, no peace.”
I weep.
My old hometown is flooded.
Blood is in the streets.
The river overflows with the blood of the city herself
She’s been cut by her native sons and daughters as they sort themselves out,
many generations later than expected,
probably too late to save my hometown.
She will die because she does not deserve to live.
She will be a memory, a page in a future history book, a wikipedia entry about the city once ruled by men in blue that wasn’t blue.
I weep.
My old hometown is gone.
There are no more untended flames threatening the safety of the many.
All that shattered glass has been used to decorate a new city’s towers and spires that rise toward the sky.
The blood is gone from the streets and pulses through the veins of living men and women who come in enough rainbow colors to populate their own big box of crayons.
From a distance, you can hear that blood thrumming and feel the city’s pulse.
My old hometown glistens, reflecting the faces of its people, all of them.
I weep because my old hometown has made me proud.
Copyright © Stephanie Mesler 2020
