Sometimes I look at the melanin in my skin in awe. A product of evolution it absorbs the light of our life-giving sun, rejects what might kill me, and turns the rest into vitamin D and heat. It keeps skin cancer at bay. It’ll keep me looking younger, longer. I like to wonder about what else it could do if I knew how to treat my body better? What else could it do if I knew how treat myself better?

The people sleeping on the streets outside our window have let themselves starve to a deathly looking paleness. Their life’s work reduced to becoming human-colored stains on the sidewalk. Women casually sell parts of their body like walking butcher shops. Their brown and pink fill up your computer screens as they give for cheap what is priceless. Walking from work are Black men who roam the sidewalks like zombies – man-made chemicals have hollowed out the eyes and cheeks.

As they walk to work, or a bar, or to a bed, you and I both see people who are being attacked by their own hearts. Angry organs and veins that have been pushed too far are conspiring to kill their owners: a people who live lives of scarcity, fear and rage.

What could they be if they stopped? What could we be if we just looked at ourselves, then looked at that sun?

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*Image Courtesy Ayisha