The last goodbye was at the airport. She was leaving Canada and the plan was that they would see each other again. She was sobbing. She felt like she was walking through molasses. The ugly, hard chairs at the airport reflected how she felt. She knew deep down that this was the end. She would never see him again. He promised though – he promised he would be with her soon. He loved her. She wanted him to love her. They had talked about kids. She was in a hotel in LA – she woke in a cold sweat shouting his name. Her heart was broken. 

She went to the coast for the weekend with her family – he didn’t answer any of her phone calls. He ignored everything that she sent him. She was still so in love. He called her when she got home. She was sitting in a beanbag on her floor. As soon as she heard his voice, she knew it had happened. 

“I was wondering if she can stay the night?” 
“Why?” 
“We are just going to make some music together” 
“OK – why does she need to spend the night?” 
“Actually – I don’t think this relationship is going to work.” 
“oh.”

The lump in her throat rendered her speechless. 
She hung up. She found a bottle of red wine. She put on Amelie and she sobbed. More than she’d sobbed in a long while. The ugly cry. The cry that made you run out of breath and hiccup. He sent the video of them singing a love song together.  

She was so beautiful. 
Her name was Kat. Nice, easy, normal, white.  
Priya wanted to look and dress just like her. 
She kinda wanted to be her. 
Was it jealousy or was it something else? 
Maybe she envied the ease with which Kat floated through this world.

She continued to work under women like Kat. 
As if politics was beneath them. 
As if because they turned the news off, they could just ignore the suffering. 
Oh, it’s so sad what's happening over there they would say with a wave of her hand and a dismissive tone.
Was this the privilege of whiteness? 
Priya wished she could be oblivious to the interconnected atrocities. 
But she couldn't.

Wasn't bearing witness and having your heart break every single day part of what it meant to be human? 

The mask that these women wore was almost better than her own. 

The more she interacted with people like herself; it confirmed that it wasn't just her that saw through this facade. There was something truly toxic and hateful under the surface of people like this. 

They were living the dream without realising that the dream was also made from a mountain of their own discarded bodies, allowing the white man to keep a flag at the top. 

Years after the heartbreak, after her heart had healed slightly and she had reconciled what it meant to be and embrace herself, she wrote a poem that she thought fit these women perfectly.
It went like this. 

You think we like your voices. 
You laugh about how its all a bit too hard.
Whilst sitting in your privilege
And throwing glass shards.

With your voice. 
With your eyes. 
You don’t need to tell us you hate us.

Some people you say. 
They don’t listen. 
They can’t talk like us. 

We are the knowledge. 
We will gatekeep
With our cracked lipstick 
And 
Our fake allyship 

We don’t need to say it.
But we know we are better than you. 

Why can’t you be civilised? 
Eat with fork and knife? 
Just ignore it when black and brown babies die.

We take your language 
Twist it 
And use it to stab you in the back. 

We only have friends that look like us 
Because we just get it.
Our friendship is easy because we maintain the status quo 

We would love to have you around, 
But play by our made up rules. 

We encourage self-reflection for YOUR growth
But the only self-reflection we like is how we look in the mirror. 

Your thinly veiled threats 
Hide that you want to be like us

While you fill your lips with botox 
And 
Lather yourselves with fake tan
And 
Make yourselves something you are not. 

We are the women of white
We are feminists. 
We rule the world. 
And you better remember that. 

Priya reflected on the way that people had said that she was too angry, but all she could think was I that anger was a message. A reminder that this was all unjust. 

That power is unequally distributed. 
That we are all cogs in a killing machine. 
That our world has been designed in such a way that we are harmed by black and brown anger but not by the killing. 
That we tone ourselves down so as to not upset the monsters.

She chose to listen to her anger. It was productive (even though it didn't need to be), but it was also sacred. 
And if you couldn’t hear her because of her rage... it made her ask... why weren’t they raging? 
Shouldn't we all be raging?