Celestial Bodies / Blackface
This is for you, Ben.
According to astrologers, there would be comets in the sky tonight.
From what I know about these things, sometimes they are visible from the sky and differ from asteroids because of the tails in their wake. Truth is, I know very little about comets and tend to confuse them with other cosmic phenomena.
For us to see eye to eye, I had to look up. You are tall, after all - and your face is as dark as the night sky. In jest, I called you mi cometa pequeño, because Spanish is the language I run to when my native tongue and my mother tongue are too obvious. Whenever you looked at my face, I imagined that this is how being in the path of a meteor shower must feel. In turn, I showed you my entire hand; my entire heart. The best card players and lovers know never to lay their best down all at once - nobody ever taught me how to hustle.
I look up at the night sky and the clouds obscure my view.
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Sometimes you blend into photographs where there is shit lighting, almost like a joke. "CALM DOWN, BLACKFACE!" I find myself saying aloud, mimicking a particularly scathing Dave Chapelle sketch. Your skin is the same color as our forefathers, but that is one of the only things that give you the right to identify as Filipino. I thought we'd make a fine pair - the whiteness and freckles granted me by my German great-grandfather, grandly contrasting with your sun-kissed brown skin. I thought, perhaps, that there was no difference in our differences, but you ran away before I could state my case.
"Calm down, Blackface."
According to astrologers, there would be comets in the sky tonight.
From what I know about these things, sometimes they are visible from the sky and differ from asteroids because of the tails in their wake. Truth is, I know very little about comets and tend to confuse them with other cosmic phenomena.
For us to see eye to eye, I had to look up. You are tall, after all - and your face is as dark as the night sky. In jest, I called you mi cometa pequeño, because Spanish is the language I run to when my native tongue and my mother tongue are too obvious. Whenever you looked at my face, I imagined that this is how being in the path of a meteor shower must feel. In turn, I showed you my entire hand; my entire heart. The best card players and lovers know never to lay their best down all at once - nobody ever taught me how to hustle.
I look up at the night sky and the clouds obscure my view.
------------------
Sometimes you blend into photographs where there is shit lighting, almost like a joke. "CALM DOWN, BLACKFACE!" I find myself saying aloud, mimicking a particularly scathing Dave Chapelle sketch. Your skin is the same color as our forefathers, but that is one of the only things that give you the right to identify as Filipino. I thought we'd make a fine pair - the whiteness and freckles granted me by my German great-grandfather, grandly contrasting with your sun-kissed brown skin. I thought, perhaps, that there was no difference in our differences, but you ran away before I could state my case.
"Calm down, Blackface."