PORCELAIN LAIN ON CLAY

I dream of her. Her whole being, I dream. Her fair skin is soft like the white pillows that lay on the shadowy sheets. She lies gently as if not wanting to disturb the tranquility of the moment, she rests upon me. Her hair is a wild civility, at once European but revealing a tangling curiosity.

She is a ghost of the future. Her diaphanous intents of our union cause strength to stir within me. If she knows, she is courageous to be so persistent. If only blind passion strengthens her will, it is that passion and resolve we will need to carry us through. She is a ghost of the future, a future materializing itself more and more with every passing day; it is a future where there is no fear between the different. A time where opposite colors aren’t looked at as opposing, but only parallel sides of the same entity. We are just two different expressions of the human successfully united; the future is materializing more and more, in us, everyday.

I know the cultural and sociological benefits to our partnership, but this is serendipity, only a confirmation, a reason, for the preexisting passion for a different race. I have not yet come to understand this preference; to be honest, it concerns me greatly. I’ve felt this hunger for the different as early as I could remember liking girls. Did I inherit this inclination? My mother and father was an interracial couple. Could it be an inherent gift of exploration, a mutant gene perhaps? Is it merely lust unrestrained? Maybe it is an expression of great empathy towards a certain ethnic group? Could it be love? Could I ever be truly happy pursuing relations with my own color? Should I compromise to be accepted in society? It seems wrong to conform just because someone says I have to, because in truth, I don’t really have to do anything. One thing I know for certain, the weight of these questions burden my mind. I know this: To my own self be true, I must love freely. This brings me back to her.

Every time I first see her, I want her. I am fully aware that this, this is desire, not love, pure desire. I know this feeling because I’ve known it before. However this case is different. I can say I feel different when I get closer to her, her person when I know her beyond the physical; then I am aware that I love her. It is extremely curious to me how a deep rooted love can be ostentatiously adorned by earnest infatuation. I am strengthened each time we come together.

I adore the way her fair lithe body winds around my own brunet structure. The rapid alternation of flashing light and dark - We in one rhythm move amongst the scarlet covering, becomes a work of art in my mind. We are the new generation of modern art. I am lifted to a place beyond imagining, beyond creativity.

How could this be? In an ecstatic haze I try to form into words what it is I am feeling but the emotions that flow through me captures my mind and then take hostage my thoughts. In euphoria I try to force words, yet still unable to do so due to the convulsions of my body and the ceaseless quivering of my lip; I am possessed by the power of desire. However in all this chaos, I am aware of my apostolic devotion to her.

Every time I see her, allowed to think of her, I feel blessed by the Creator. The hands that crafted such an ethereal beauty (I am most positive she was no accident of cellular slime) loved me so much as to put such a sacred soul in my hands. My fingertips discover the texture and tangibility of a breathing aesthetic moment; I perceive this must be the highest act of worship. I realize this to be sacred; I am humbled by
this I am humbled by her. Am I worthy? I begin to search myself.

I begin to think; I begin to search my inner self. I am sensual, alive to the now. I center myself to the world and become part of it; I am clay; I am at once mailable yet, in some conditions, surprisingly firm. Like clay I am a hinted red in a dark brown, not tan as my fairer sisters, I resemble my father, a coffee-colored man no cream, no sugar. While I myself was forged from two racial backgrounds (my mother, native Hawaiian, my father, Afro-American), I know I can learn to see outside color-lines and also benefit from another cultural community at such an intimate level; this teaches real humanitarianism… for it comes from the heart.

As I feel her heart beating next to mine I understand all of this. I look at her and She looks at me with the same expression. We have been thinking the same thing; two like souls with different covering. I look into her pensive eyes and I see clearer; I see my own future. Where at first I was myopic to my own destiny, now I am excited to pursue our goals and relish in the one life we both share.

* * *

He sees himself as hinted red in dark brown; a bold red streak against the nourishing black earth. Red, passion, anger-red welts raised on my white skin, sunburn. But our passion is an enduring, increasing, passion. Long days spent in the sun, toiling in that black soil, the two of us unaware of our entanglement, even then. How could we have known? But a part of me has always known. It’s as if I have his heart; we are safe this way, our hearts beating in a single chest. I don’t care what people say, moreover the stares of the closed-eyed strangers. We hear it all, the positive things we hold close to our heart, the negative slander we just ignore. It does hurt my heart a little; Words hurt, even when I try to close my ears to their intolerance.

They pry, as to know why a pretty white girl like me would date a savage. They bring up the O.J. story and walk away upset, leaving me angry. I can’t let it get to me; I just use that passion to strengthen my resolve. I hear what my love goes through as well; it always seems to me more brutal when people attack him. Some say he was brainwashed by American society to accept the standard of beauty is Caucasian; they claim the only reason he’s dating me, is because he hates himself. How ignorant! Why can’t it just be that I appreciate the contrasts of our bodies, I relish in the diversity of our cultures, I am excited by the strength of his solid arms. When the world gets too much for me to handle he comes to my rescue and we embrace; He holds me like delicate porcelain, and I feel protected by the world.

Destiny has put us together; two earthen vessels containing the same living water. In dreams, I stand; I plant my slim feet in the moist dirt after a spring rain, enjoying the richness of tomato-bounty, the sweet-sharp taste of raspberry on my tongue. Later that sharpness will remind me of him, the closeness of our bodies, moving in time, the heat in his eyes burning me through more than any sun ever could. The tendrils of snow peas wrap themselves delicately around my wrists, gentle as his fingers, and insects clamber over the mountains of my feet. When I bury my hands in that mysterious, life-giving soil and burn my European skin, when the wind blows my hair into a mess of curls and tangles, I return to him. He is always a part of me.