As I grew younger, by Michael Colbert

It seemed like it was just only today, for there were no more yesterdays, no more tomorrows, only-a younger today, forever today!!  The brightness of the sun 🌞was many moons 🌙 ago and it all seemed so natural, so strange that today the full moon had the juice looking like the sun all big and orangely lit reflecting and shining the sun's brilliant light, and even though I lived and I sat low with the many stars of dark shadows, I could still see 👀me, "black me! I will, I will, for I will rise up and shine amongst the many stars of dark shadows ✨,  Yes ! I could still see me, black  me rising, rising up out of the dark shadows and as I approach the stars of dark shadows in the now silvery glow of the moon’s 🌙 light.

I ask them, "Where is the sun 🌞" 

They say to me, " Wait a minute who are you?”

I say, "Black me." 

“So why are we so dark and not black like you?”

Perhaps you'll see when the sun 🌞returns for dark and black is not the same.

That’s when I realized I was just like the many stars of dark shadows with a gifted mind down and out contemplating on my fate, my darkness drowning me in a sea of guilt, my conscience holding me down in shame because of the many things I’ve been through in life trials thus becoming a dark shadow, until the sun’s light shown upon me with its brightness instilling the good, awaking the conscience to its natural light I was born with to bring me back into wholeness, into the awareness of self, true identity, a righteous self and then—  

All of a sudden the sun returns turning the moon chalky white and the stars of dark shadows into brilliantly bright magnificent and beautiful colors of different lights, a rainbow mixture of their natural settings, from black to white and all in-between, and standing next to the sun was black me telling the stars of dark shadows, "I told you so, I told you so, dark and black is not the same, look at you now, look at me now, for black me will always be beautifully you!!!!!!!!!!!!"    

Listen to Michael read “As I grew younger” here:

Michael Colbert, pictured above front center, is one of the pillars of this intriguing creative writing course who would like to share and welcome all to a fun reading and writing of his personal experience in a long journey of an imaginative mind. Michael has been part of Re/Creation since participating in its earliest workshops on Rikers Island, and has been instrumental in developing our organization.