Everyday shame

 

Everyday shame

(for Toni Morrison)

Everyday shame

At different stages in my life

Disgusting earworms have entered my being

At secondary school it was the racist & homophobic taunts

They got stuck in me like ocean plastic getting caught in fishes’ bellies

They’ve never completely left

Despite my love of common humanity

Despite my love of people designated as “Other”

Despite the fact that "diverse" families have adopted me

 

These earworms died down there for a while

But were chronically refreshed during my years in South London

Where the culture was balanced on a knife's edge

These slurs against those deemed “different”

Have had a marketing makeover

& it's more subtle now

You don't hear those old slurs as often

But I hear them under people's breaths

& I see them in their eyes

Recently I was speaking with an Indigenous elder

It was as if he was entering my soul

He heard those taunts unspoken

& I heard him hearing them

My anxiety

My complex 

My scars of witness

I don’t know what he made of it

But I but I know what I made of it

 

We get contaminated by the evil in the world

& it lives in our inner being

All we can do is own up to it

In the hope that one day

It will be passed out of us.

 

 

Published & Copyright Malachi Doyle 2023.