Skin

Skin is the original cloth and it must be spun with just the right kind of thread. Poreless, alabaster, sun-spared, shimmering, soft, seamless covering is God-spun. Anything less is a stained, hole-ridden rug. Clear skin is character unspotted, young skin is mortality curbed, child preserved, soft skin is fragility defined, needing masculine protection, fair skin is the coloniser internalised, the colonised reviled. Skin must be blameless, innocent, untouched entirely. It must be the purest thing in the world.

The skin is my maker. The hours I have spent obsessing over it could have gotten me a Ph.D in dermatology but all it did was link my mood to the number of spots my face was hosting at the time. And there were more than a few. It was quite a party up there. I would molest the acne until it bust out of its covering, registering its protest onto my skin. More despair would follow. I could not look people in the eye. I could not turn my head freely for fear of restless bright light illuminating not just the battles on my face but my slowly sinking sense of worth. I hid, I cowered, I shrunk.