I Have Moon Eyes
Labor of identity
I have moon eyes.
I look out from my moving windows of a rotating planet that has not quite figured out yet what it takes to hold me, the one with moon eyes, in hands that understand soft, that do not demand to know the name and the color of my every petal, that know of my blooming even before the spring comes.
I have moon eyes.
You know our playground that they designed based on the colors they asked us to wear for our easier identification?
That playground is where I get selected everyday for a game that I do not want to play or one that I want to play but have been banished from.
Really all I ever want to do is just play, but because I have moon eyes, you tell me I am only allowed the tree house. And the ones with golden hands make sure it remains that way. I do not know what they get out of it. It might be that unknown colors confuse them. And I don’t even claim one.
But I have moon eyes.
So I gather all the stars in my fish bowl and climb the stairs built by my mother’s red earth and my father’s god hands. I reach the top of our world and look down at the playground. I only see rainbows.
But that is because I have moon eyes. They call me special and it is rightly so.
~
Vaishali Paliwal
For my young friend Eshaan who makes his own new colors and dreams of his own unique stars everyday. He teaches me how to see past the labels and ideas that I have created for myself and others. The naming and the categorizing is exhausting and clearly unhealthy for our world. We can be our own little unicorns. All different from each other and all uniquely special. I am not a #brownGoddess or a #girlboss. I am not any label. I am not even #notanylabel.
Society is very hell-bent on making us select our blocks we can easily fit in for its easier processing and capitalist goals. This force and push for us to slip into already laid out identities for us is utter non-sense and must stop to avoid further damage to human psychology and collective consciousness. We will be so much stronger with our individualities not bogged down by pre-identified groups, ideas and categories for us. Creativity will thrive and seperation and wars will end.
