White As a Prayer

When I put my head on my pillow tonight, and every night until I die, I’m going to reconsider and recontextualize my whiteness for my own sake.

I’m going to speak the truth of my whiteness to myself as a monk speaks the repetitive truths of his nightly prayers to God.

I’m doing this for my own sake. For what’s left of my soul.

I know now, for many of my neighbors, my whiteness doesn’t mean “purity” or “righteousness” or anything even remotely close to those kind notions that possessed me in my youth.

In the eyes of history, the eyes of truth, the eyes of so many of my neighbors, I am white as death. I must reconcile my self to these truths so I may begin to act outside of the current state of my whiteness.

One small prayer for what’s left of my white soul.

I am a white man in America.

I am not righteous.

I am not pure.

I am a white man in America.

White as exposed bone.

White as empty treaties.

White as gunsmoke.

White as erasure.

White as tree smoke.

White as bison skulls.

White as cotton.

White as bed linens.

White as torn bridal gowns.

White as sunbleached bounty posters.

White as hoods.

White as flaming crosses.

White as jail cells.

White as hospitals.

White as drained lips.

White as the Southern ghosts that possess my tongue.

White as the cowards that possess my mind.

White as the Serpent’s smile.

White as the milky poison.

White as the fangs.

White as the claws.

White as The Fog.