The Values of Humanity

Waves crashing, the smell of salt in the air, and the grit of sand beneath my feet, I feel it. Y’all, when asked a year ago, what one thing I would bring if I was going to a deserted island, I threw up the word brother as if it were word vomit. Logically, you’d bring a boat, a flint, matches, paper, pen, books, music, cell phones, and any other objects you could fathom, but what about a person? What about a person? What about a human? What about a life, y’all? Ask me again what I would bring. What if you had a voice, a sound, a heartbeat, instead of just still silence?Sinking into grains of eroded rock, I am not alone. To value a life, y’all, is to value a face, a companion, a breath that does not belong to you. Two a.m. is the most honest hour and I’m standing in front a raging sea screaming only to have it yell back louder, because it doesn’t give a damn about what I have to say y’all. But what is the value of a hand embracing yours simply to prove that it is two against one, and you can fight this? Ask me again what I would bring. Parting like the red sea and then loud roars from crashing waves on the shore, my thoughts flood to the lives that weren’t valued enough: Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Benjamin Deen, Liquori Tate, Jose Mendoza, and Lawrence King among the few. Why do we carry around the word discriminate in our pockets like a tissue to excuse our coughs of generated hate? The shirts that are made of disgusted looks and cruel words. The pants stitched together at the seams by the many threads of hope just to be ripped apart later and handed down to the next generation with holes that hold faith in humanity like water in a colander. The shoes wearing down with each step taken for granted that some people walk a different mile in every single day, yet still manage to get to their destination no matter the struggle of the path they are lead down. Y’all, ask me again, what I would bring. I would bring a body that is made of up of hundreds of constellations that create a galaxy not explained in a science book. I would bring a smile that is a picture spoken into a thousand words that not even Webster himself could define. I would bring a soul so passionate about life you would confuse it for the fame of a lit candle in a church to keep me warm, so that when I have turned into an iced over lake of emotions, I will melt into a puddle of understood life. I would bring a set of lungs inflated with hope, so that when mine are nothing more than deflated birthday party balloons, I can still breathe. Ask me again what I would bring. I would bring you a heart that plays my favorite melody, so that when I am nothing more than a scratched record on a turn table, I can still be heard. Ask me again what I would bring. I would bring the values of a human, of a person, of a life that is so easily taken for granted by those that have yet to understand the values of humanity. 

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My family
My community
My country
Our world
Guide that inspired this poem: 

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