Child's Cycle to Adulthood

"Chinese Japanese Taiwanese
look at these", as kids
fingers pulled at eyelid
corners. The songs of
"Ching-Chong Ching-Chong"
a din loud as the summer rain.

They didn't throw stones or
bricks. Forty-years ago they
did. We go to the same school.
Forty years ago we did not.

Still, quick as the truths
of man's cruel nature, we
too, found ourselves just
not the same. Wracked
and quartered by blind hate.

As time went on, my friends
began to look more and more
like I did. As time went on
I wondered, "What is wrong?"

Now I sit and yell my inventive
racism at their faces. Now that
slow venom is mine. Now I
sit in groups of people who
look exactly like me.

What has gone wrong? I cannot
imagine that I had meant to
feel this way, so lost between
what is right and what is easy.

I wish we could just grow up.

Author's Note: I don't mean to say that I am racist, nor that I exclusively hang out with those like me. Actually, Ironically I find myself around those much different from me in ethnicity, but those who look exactly like me. Sometimes I simply wonder if that is just how it is, if this is pure chance, or if my eyes are turned away from my own racist tendencies.