This place is cruel, unfair and prejudiced at its most ignorant and tribalistic at its most innate. I am but a lost soul, a wandering black and yet here I stand, in your world, mask over unsightly lips, hands & eyes to conceal "unsightly" flesh from your gaze. I can't escape the feeling, the truth or the reality that your judgement upon me is like a thousand drops of rain on a cold day, and your eyes on me squeezes tightly like a noose around my neck... constricting me, choking me, killing me. It is here, only after the color has faded from my skin and only after the blood has drained from my lips, do you avert your gaze. It is now as i lay before you, pale skin and cold lips do you finally accept me as beautiful.