Tea, Walls, and Closed-mindedness

I peer across the gap, straining to see your eyes. The landscape that once looked familiar to me is now foreign and foreboding, like a postcard from Depression-Era Kansas. Our eyes meet and I catch a glimpse of your humanity, which vanishes in an instant. In its place appears a look that explains the walls that have existed for eternity in your country. Walls that shut them out. Walls that shut me out, tearing me from my mother's bosom. The city must be spotless white, that's what you'd say, if I could hear you.
That's what I said so long ago. I remember washing myself over and over, hiding the filthy rags till they could no longer be hidden. I was so ashamed, then, of the dirt. Little pieces of carnality that desperately clung to my person. Now I am only ashamed of the rags.
Still you glare, your cataractous eyes pleading me to leave my new home and cross back again into the land of shame and white...so much white I know this land must appear black to you. Black and white. Where are the colors? Where are the flowers? "Where is the love?"
Colors are selfish. Flowers self-serving. Love is degraded to lust. I know you think that, for I too did, when I did not have the power to see.
I miss the simplicity, I truly do. But how can I leave this work I have here? How can I abandon the cause that I have dedicated my life to? The people I could help, the plants I could make greener, the skies I could make a brighter blue.
You cannot see my work, yet you criminalize it. Selfish. Worthless. Even...Abomination. We do all those things here, you think. Yet never have you left that walled city. The fools, the broken, the blissfully ignorant that want your help are forced to cross a treacherous bridge, shaking. Boards missing where the unfortunate have lost themselves through. Those who finally did make it, but with questions or wearing the wrong color shoes are turned away at the gate, just close enough to view the pristine dwellings beyond.
I keep staring at your eyes, noticing again the peculiarity of the expression. I am ever-surprised to find not just judgement, but conviction. The fervency with which you believe in these walls. The utter safety you find in them. I cannot hate your eyes.
I glance behind me, reminding me of the beauty of this chaos. I turn again to give you the look of purest pity, for I realize once more that it is you that cannot enter paradise.