Racism of Antiquity

"Racism of Antiquity"
There's a part of me
that is scared all of this,
   
That one day
I will be sitting silently
     wondering what more we could be,
Left thinking back
from a silent room
watching painful echoes
     move about my memories,

Seeing a past written...
that I don't remember...
by someone else...

     Looking at spots in history
          that did not
               go the way
                    they said it went,

Remembering when
     they used to say we all mattered,

Scared...

Left
Asking myself...
     was it all real?
     Did any of it ever happen?
     Or did I just imagine it?

The thought of
Not Having
a normal life
     without racial bias.
     Makes the world
     feel so heavy,

I don't want to experience
my life under the crushing
pretense
of racial intolerance,

However,

I don't want to sit inside memory,
Remembering
Racism of Antiquity
becoming
just a normal point of view,
   
The so called Myth,
     I had to experience
     from a life I once had
     to a life I still have,

     to a life I will die with.

Leaves me dying already
and only alive enough
to feel your discrimination
to fight back
for another generation

so that your children
will be
friends with my children
and they will become the change
we could not be.

I want to experience today now,
To taste your hate on my tongue
     and hold it near,
To feel
and hear
and know in my heart
     that you are not safe
until you change.
-Armando Torres