The Systems We Caste

fault is not in fate it grows in you, you gave birth to, breastfed and raised the man who raises his hand fate and fault are not constellations but a distillation, a condensation of culturalized, traditionalized condemnations, birthed, breastfed to raise the backside of its hand to your daughter’s face that she comes to know his will and her lowly place it’s you, your hard-handed, handiwork mandating domestic vocations over economic emancipation from his high-handedness it's you, the pretty ones and ones the pretty ones say are not so pretty it grows in you in hues of light, lighter and the lightest of white, it’s your black specter cast from your black sun beneath which the contours of your dalit sister’s darker darkness can’t shadow your deep well waters of matriarchal privileges of light and lighter without being brutalized within inches of her life 24