This is something I wrote a week ago, before happening upon Red Paint. Interesting how things come in our lives when we are thinking in similar veins…
The world tells me to envy her
The world tells her to pity me
I live on dirt
She lives on tile and carpet
Money only comes in my life when something extraordinary happens
Extraordinary happens daily for her, does she even notice?
The world tells her that I lack
The world tells me we are behind everyone in having
When I silence the voices, I am rich
She has a large house and machines do her work
She has money to buy things
She has toilets, electricity, and steaming hot showers
She has all the time in the world to wonder is she living the right life, and what is the right life
I have grandmothers who have held me since I was born, and grandfathers who love me with wisdom
I have more relatives living under one roof than appliances under hers
We hug and pray and cook and argue and listen and laugh
We are a bunch of bodies bumping into each other and dancing with one another and cuddling each other
Does anyone so much as brush past her skin all day long?
We celebrate everything important with all the villagers, households thick with people and love like ours
We hold and dress and sit with our dead until we put them in the ground
We wash and clean and sew and mend and build and gather
We depend on each other in ways we can’t count
She greets her day alone, without base skill, without purpose, without movement
Her culture tells her to work on the screen, and then leisure on the screen, sitting all the while, watching people through pictures
Then her culture tells her she is fat and ugly and needs to get moving
My people love each other
Her people have forgotten each other
My world is dying
Dying to her world, overtaking everything
But it is her world that is dead already
I do not envy her
