If racist thought is a sickness, can it be cured?
Can it be burned out, gutted, severed from the body of a nation
that wears it like second skin?
If it is stitched into the fabric, do we tear the whole thing apart?
Or do we just pick at the seams and pretend the threads don't hold?
Can you see it, even when it blinds you?
When it stands in the open and still calls itself hidden?
If it's in the walls, in the laws, in the hands that write history,
how do you pull it from the root
when the soil has been feeding on it for centuries?
Can we trust the ones who have swallowed the fruit of this tree
to tell us what its poison tastes like?
Do they even know?
Or is their tongue too used to sweetness to feel the sting?
Do they mistake the noose for a loose thread,
pretend the rope was never tied?
What do you do when the sickness becomes the skin?
Do you cut deep,
peel it back layer by layer until the bone screams clean?
Or is the bone rotten too?
Is there anything left untouched, unspoiled,
any piece of this body that wasn't built on blood?
And if there isn't—
if it is everywhere,
if it is everything,
if it breathes through time like an unburied corpse,
tell me—
Can love reach where so much hatred lies?
