MICHAEL
MichaelI cannot believe you are gone
I first saw you when I was six
my mind ready to disregard all the infamous chattering
uttered by the giants in my life
But when my eyes finally laid rest on your skillful skeleton of wonders
I could hardly digest you
It took time, the digestion
You were too large a prodigy to swallow in one gulp
Your limbs, as if dipped in the magical waters would come to life
electrified by the rhythmic motions of your cerebellum
leading your feet to their impossible destination
At that time, my six year old mind was only mature enough to call you an 'American'
What would I have known of the disease that plagued your insides, dissolving the person you were supposed to be
I thought you were ashamed of being black, that you had somehow reduced the melanin in your skin to thin tiny goblets splattered onto the wall as your nose grew thinner and thinner
But I was not convinced
The rugae lining the insides of my stomach knew it was being protected by the fearsome acid in my stomach
But the words 'Vitiligo' seemed to pass in front of my eyes at the speed of light, travelling through the islands of ignorance until these eight letters registered into the grey matter of my brain, exploding at the speed of firing neurons
You were proud to be black, you made us feel proud of ourselves
To have an enigma, the dancing man belong to us
Be one of us
But alas, death beckoned one day and took you for his own
Your music's still here
Your dance moves? Everyone's copying them nowadays
But what made you YOU is somehow lost in the gaps between the silences of your words, forever.
Poetry by Nabeela Altaf
Read 1185 times
Written on 2014-02-05 at 15:54
Tags Death Famous
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