It is a reckoning.

A revolution.

It is a maturation in societal evolution. 

I am a White person / a White American citizen. 

This moment in the Black Lives Matter movement 

is a reckoning. Of what I am. And who we are. 

What we do and how we live. 

I have been an oppressor with ignorance and silence as my weapons. For silence is violence and so here is my voice: READ the books of brilliant Black people. Close your pale pink lips and swallow the sounds of their cries, their philosophies, and their robust histories. WATCH them. Watch them drum. Watch them dance. Watch them live. Watch them suffer and rise, as Maya wrote, for still, they rise. Now LISTEN to them sing. Listen to these caged birds sing and sing. 

I have been complicit because I have allowed the world to tend to me and my tenderness, while it leaves so many others without essentials like freedom and air, health care, food, and clean water. I am a garden of fragile flowers. When I am not weeded, I weep. When I am not watered, I wilt. Love is my sun. I am no different from anyone, but I have been cared for by my country community. My tenderness has been tended to and so now I am so alive I thrive.

This sleeve of skin I am in, the one lacking melanin, should not be the reason I am tended to while others are not. We are all gardens of fragile flowers and we all deserve tending.