Alice Walker

I am not Black. I am most certainly not a woman…but my heart is still broken. I cannot even begin to describe the feeling of the knife as it plunges into my heart. I cannot begin to number the sins that leak from the wounds it creates. They are not only mine, but are shared with generations of men and women. Their trespasses are mine because I refuse to forget them. I shoulder the weight of the damage they have caused because I will not forget those who have suffered. They did not suffer by my hand, but they might as well have. I can see it in the eyes of their ancestors. The pain that is written upon their souls that they cannot explain because they can’t forget it either. I don’t know how to tell them I’m sorry without sounding condescending or presumptuous. I don’t know how to tell them that there is a thing called love. There is a love that goes beyond a man and a woman…even beyond God. It is nothing that could ever be expressed with words. It can only be experienced when it is felt. So overpowering that it feels as if you are only a child again, fresh from the womb, and free of all evil that was bestowed upon you by the actions of those that came before you. I am not Black. I am not a woman…but my heart is still broken.