innocence. (go back »)

i love writing. it's something that i dont do as much as id like to. most times i find myself keeping a journal in my head rather than on paper. but yeah. anyway...i was looking at my son one day...and i came up with this. so...read...enjoy. whatever you like. if i actually get comments then i'll post more stuff. and if not...then...i wont. hahaha.

"Innocence"

I don’t watch the news while he's awake. For fear that the prevalent disarray in this world will seep into the hollow spaces of his thoughts and cloud his innocent judgment. It saddens me. That although, at this stage in his life, he is carefree, he will one day have to come to term with the fact that the world outside of my arms is not welcoming him into its own.

Right now, I'm content with the fact the he isn't knowledgeable in the areas of racism, sexism, discrimination, and prejudice. He’s unaware that his abundance of melaninm as beautiful as it is, will one day force him to work twice as hard as his paler counterparts, and that the stereotypes he’ll face as a black man in a sea of hate will attempt to bog him down, keep him down, and annihilate him with vengeance. He’s oblivious to the fact that not everyone he will encounter in his life will have his best interest at heart. He’s numb to the pain he’ll experience from the knives positioned in his spine by those who once befriended him. He has no sense of betrayal. He doesn’t know that as quickly as someone asks about his day, they’ll turn the corner, and pray for his demise. He doesn’t have to face the fact that he’ll only be home-schooled because the safe haven that was once a classroom is continuously corrupted again and again and again. He has no clue that the woman he views as his mother, as the epitome of grace from which an abundance of love will always flow, is viewed by some as nothing but a nappy-headed hoe, a gold-digging bitch, or a welfare queen doomed to milk the government of it’s so called…riches.

At this stage of his life, he fears one thing: that I will leave him. In the dead of night, as he lays beside me, and I am awaken by own screaming thoughts, I rise from my bed for my nightly dose of online intoxication, but within minutes I hear the faintest sound: a voice, trembling in fear, and eager for an answer. “Mama...mama?" As though he senses that the beat of my heart is no longer aside his, he awakens from his slumber alone and troubled. I return to our room to find him sitting up, in an abyss of black, arms wide open, eagerly anticipating my return. I lie beside him, and wrap my arms around, and as though he was never awoken, he is back asleep. He wraps his arms around me, the best he can, and in that moment, I have achieved the ultimate feat once more: I have preserved his innocence yet again.