Crayon Box

L'oreal now has a makeup

That takes the guess work out of finding your perfect shade of foundation.

Well L’oreal…



It fucking took you long enough didn't it?

Where the hell was this when I was in elementary school?

Or hell

I'd settle Jr. High.

All those mornings

I had to look in the mirror and see a skin tone

That didn't quite match my foundation of friends.

This would have come in handy.

Finally.

A product that lets me feel comfortable in my own skin.

It's been 30 years since my sojourn began.

I know,

I didn't wear make up back then.

But if I'd been exposed to this miracle product beforehand,

Imagine.

All the friendships I could have saved.



My childhood

Consisted of a color palette

Composed mostly of a lighter pigment than my own.

And if our Life's Painting

Only consists of the colors of people we put in it,

My painting

Looked a lot like a newspaper lacking content.

And as the only sentence on the page,

It wasn't hard to stand out.

So I tried to blend in.

Tried not to attract attention

For fear of being mentioned.

I changed.

The way that I dressed to seem less confrontational.

Changed the way I spoke to seem more agreeable.

Changed the way I breathed

So as not to be too audible.

But I couldn't change my flesh.

No matter how bad I wanted to.



And I began to notice.

Notice

That I was always

The "black friend" my friend's parents were referring to.

Notice

That it wasn't necessarily me

Girls didn't find attractive,

But the skin I was dressed in.

Notice

That being "mixed"

And being black

Weighs just as heavily on the suburban scale of "normality."

And I'll admit.

It took me a long time to learn what they meant

When they asked me "what are you?"

As if

My overall classification of "human being”

Wasn't quite registering on their "one of us" radar.

I was lucky.

Because I had friends who didn't seem to notice me struggling to be like them.

But the environment I was in

Never let me forget that I was the exception,

Not the rule.



What if,

As children,

We were forced to grow up in a school as colorful as our crayon boxes?

Imagine,

How beautiful the stories we painted together would be.

If we began to see unique

And beauty

As synonyms.

Not commodities we can exploit to sell stories.

If the sentences "she's pretty for an Indian girl.”

Or.

"He's smart for a Mexican.”

Or.

"He's tall for an Asian guy.”

Could exist without a qualifier attached to them.

“She's pretty",

“He's smart,”

“He’s just fucking tall,”

Period.



Color

Only matters

To people who are afraid

That one day theirs might not.

And I've been afraid most of my life

Of offending those people with my existence.

But I'm developing a resistance.

A new set of eyes

That sees beauty in the "abnormalities."

I'm writing stories

That tell of colors the first cameras

Could quite capture.

Full of characters so diverse in complexion,

You'd have a hard time finding similarities in anything

But our laughter.



So I'm sorry L’oreal.

You're a little too late.

See, I no longer need a cream in a bottle to help me blend in.

I'm a little too busy,

Trying to stand out.