Maybe

• Jah-rel Martinez, Grade 8
• Poetry
• 2016

Acceptance is facing rejection. We’re buried, unwary of this misdirection. We’ve blocked ourselves into a section, of hate. We just can’t seem to cooperate if my skin colour is different. But nobody wants to listen, shouldn't matter if you're Muslim, or Jewish or Christian..

But maybe it's different, maybe we don’t reject people from the colour of their skin or the colour of their culture, maybe we’re like vultures. Or maybe we see something in them, that's like us, that we choose to keep hidden. We want them gone, good riddance.

Everyone’s prepared to type, #acceptance, but when the situation’s real they keep a nice, steady distance. In our whole existence, we’ll refuse to take assistance, from another man, even though that’s the path of least resistance. And you heard me right, I said another man. That's what we are men, not dissing the ones more feminine. Man equals a human. This knowledge illuminates, and from the shadows springs this wild inhuman hate.

But us people aren’t tame, we find power in aiming down the sights, at people the same. But we find them different. And that thought is spread to the heart of our children, and the infants, until it sounds coherent. This is a moral plague. But we don’t try to heal it.

Thank you