A monster is a being with no traceable origin. It has no family tree; no genealogy. Its relation to society is nonexistent. It is the absolute threat of terror in the psyche.
Does that describe me? Does my black body vanish me beyond the bounds of humanity?
Monsters are so often found in darkness that the two are entangled. Night is where the bad things occur. Fear hides behind the shadows in our closets. In our cultural canons we regularly imagine that menace sleeps beyond the border of sundown. So much so that danger now escapes into darkness to fester.
I’ve seen lots of eyes connect fear to me. Lots of hearts dread that I am what’s behind the veil in your dark alleys.
Black bodies are frequently placed outside of acceptance. They are – permanently - too scary, too strong, too dark, too ugly, too violent, too insatiable, too sexual, too bombastic, too happy, too much. They are also excessively productive. Prolific. Desired and therefore consumed. When one’s body is divided from its self and has its flesh and soul ritualistically cannibalized, under stark relentless light, they lose their legibility. They become darkness and monstrosity combined, caliginous.
Have I been eaten? Desired so much to have my essence ripped from my bones. Hated so much to have my ME made invisible.
Blackness is what we ARE and to the spectator that makes us dangerous. We are relegated to the position of social pariah. Our truth is obscured in the eyes of civility. So they feel justified in their fear of our monstrous existence. Because monsters are irrational, they are mysterious, they defy reason, they are never innocent, and they are always violent.
Am I monstrous?
Narratives in power tell us darkness is the territory of evil. Experience told me otherwise. Have you strolled into night to find your lover’s embrace? Closed your eyes as your lips warmed their neckline? Had them trace images across your thighs in sensual repartee. Imagine the calm that held your mind at the edge of the sand and the ocean in the evening hours before dawn. Possibility is exhausted under bright light. Illumination traps chance under the microscope where it is overwhelmed and teased apart until nothing remains. Fear of darkness is our mythological bedrock. And yet in darkness all events become likely. Unseen and Un-thought possibility oscillates madly in blackness and it collapses into one only when touched by your matter. All things grand, terrible, lovely, warm, vicious and viscerally frightening exist within blackness.
In the darkness there ARE monsters. For the bystander, in the darkness I AM monstrous.
If your question for me is “should you fear blackness - in my heart, on my skin, under my feet, and behind my eyes?” I am here to assure you the answer is yes.
