I remember buckskins, the white skin hiding white skin from white skin. I remember red paint and black stinky mud; I remember arrowhead and warclub and gunpowder; white skin making artifacts to hide from white skin. I remember ghosts of teepees spread across the land mouths open wide, fiery screams flashing in the dark, bony desperate arms thrown up at the stars, “save us from this white skin sleeping inside our white skin.” Silent, contrasting night, mocking moon with its white, white skin. In the river, in the dark, I burst from tepid depths, my white skin in the pale light flashing across the desert like lightning.
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