Melanin
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 17, '20 3:54am
Thread Topic: Melanin
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I'm gonna have like 50 entries for both the writing and art contest, just you wait! XD
The themes I've chosen are: Prejudice and death.
Warnings: Death, implied racism
This is kind of an ode to all of the unjustified shootings that happen to African Amercian people. A serious topic for sure, but my next entry will probably be more lighthearted so it's okay if this isn't your thing.
When people tan, the ultraviolet rays from the sun penetrate their skin and melanocyte cells produce melanin. In other words, the sun shines on people and the people get darker.
I've always thought that was beautiful. A little poetic, really. The brightest thing in the galaxy causes humans to become darker... The universe is speckled with stars in pitch black darkness, and it wants people to join in and become part of space's voiden beauty.
That's exactly what I was thinking as the white officer held his gun to the back of my head.
I wasn't afraid. It was kind of strange. When he pulled it out I got scared at first, but then this overwhelming sense of calm washed over me like lava over Pompeii.
He was searching me, looking for any weapons or drugs. I wonder if it's protocol for an officer to search with a gun pointed at the person they're searching. I could feel the cold muzzle against my frizzy hair, pressing into my head, a reminder of the officer's power over me.
It was all for naught. I had nothing. It was late, and I was simply driving home from a friend's house. My mom told me she'd left her medicine in the car and I was simply going to return it.
What a weird world. It took trillions upon trillions of choices, chances, and changes for me to be here, at this point in time, at this exact hour, at this exact place, and at the exact same time as this cruiser that passed by a few minutes earlier.
"What's your name, kid?" The officer asks.
"Lydia."
"Step aside- and keep your hands up- so I can search your car," The officer says. I do so. I also take this chance to read his badge number. 3852.
The policeman rummages around the car roughly. He opens and then throws down my books, as if they'd have some sort of secret enclosure.
"Careful, that's Hemingway you're throwing aroun-" I try to say, but the man yells "QUIET!"
...Okay.
The officer finally gets out of my car, and for a moment I'm relieved. He was done. I could go home.
But the look on his face sends shivers down my spine. He looks.. satisfied. Like he's found what he's looking for. My eyes catch a glimpse of what's in his hand; my mom's oxycodone.
She'd been in a car accident a few weeks prior to today. This wasn't exactly the safest neighborhood, but it was all we could afford right now.
"So you're a drug dealer," He says as he lifts his gun again, pinpointed straight at my face.
I wonder what my blood would look like, splattered all over the sidewalk. If he decided to have the gun be approximately 16 inches closer, I'm sure some of my brain would invite itself out as well. Would it be like a canvas of abstract art, painted by an angry artist looking to make something crude and raw? Or perhaps it'd look like the first drops of rain on dry concrete, dropping one by one and making little patches of darkness? Or perhaps a chef with a cake that they've poured shiny crimson glaze atop of...
I never answered the question. Oops. Now he looks at me angrily, somehow more contempt than before.
"Get down!" The policeman yells. I don't even have the energy to argue back. I also don't have the energy to follow instructions. I'm stock-still.
"Get down right now!" The officer says again.
"You're mistaken. That's my mom's. She was-"
"GET DOWN."
"I have proof. Her prescription is somewhere in the glove compartment, if you'd just let me-" I reach over towards the car. My window is open. I figure I can show him the documents and everything would be fine. Before I even have time to push the button for the glove compartment though, a shot rings out.
A shot.
A shot?
Oh.
My vision goes dark. Like a lens cover over a camera. Every memory, and picture, and video that I've taken with the camcorder of my eyes begin to wash away. My cornea, my irisis, my pupils, they betray me. Next comes my footing. I begin to fall as if in slow motion, like a frame by frame animation being played at a frame rate of 0.0001 fps. And my senses. Et tu, Brute? I can't feel anything anymore. I was Tantalus, I'm trying and failing to grasp at sentience. How could everything be shutting down so slowly yet so quickly?
My second to last thoughts are about melanin. I've always thought that it was beautiful. A bit.. poetic. The sun, a random star speckled by chance in this exact spot in the universe, making us darker by the minute. The cosmos is so dark. So dark, yet so pulchritudinous. It's like it wants us to join in on it's Stygian beauty.
How can someone assume that me having more melanin than them make me such a bad person? How can someone kill me based off of the melanin in my skin?
The last thoughts are about my mom.
She'll need a lot more than medicine to treat this type of pain.
I love you.
I'm already dead before I hit the ground. -
Dude, you did amazing with this piece. Usually, I don't get chills when I read something, but this gave me chills.
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Thanks a ton Jade! I'm glad you got such a strong reaction, your words mean everything to me <3
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Woah. That was very impactful.
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Thanks spice! I have very strong opinions about this kinda thing, and I'm usually not very opnionated hehe
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I'm curious
Did you write this before George Floyd or after?
I mean if it was before then whoa that's kinda insane.
If after than I totally see where you're coming from with this -
I believe that it was after George's murder, but I didn't see a single post about George at the time I wrote this story :0 Insane indeed
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That is like prophetic wow. The situation has blown up so much and your story almost feels like at the heart of it lol.
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I HATE people like that policeman. They just hate you for no reason and do everything in their power to put you down.
I love the melanin train of thought (I'm not sure what you'd call that, so it's a train of thought)!!! I've never thought about it that way!
You people with pheomelanin are lucky. I have eumelanin, so I don't tan, I burn. 50 layers of sunscreen a day.
There's me spewing out random facts, but you guys are still lucky.
Honestly, I'm trying to keep my neutrality with all these stories, but yours is just so good, you're making it so hard! Your story is fantastic! -
10!
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