On the downtown line
An American gruffly yelled
—I’ll call the cops on you!
I didn’t know until later
his whiteness mistook
brown me for nothing but
a “Terrorist”.
The colour of my skin
rattled the F train
in his crazed blue eyes
I’d never seen the rails
from inside a
moving subway
Never at the ends
of underground trains
a rectangle of light
pulling us into
the seething belly
of the world
but hate moves faster
than speed of rays.
Brightly dehumanising
blue bigoted eyes.
My crime? Recording
a video of the tracks
on my first ever smartphone
Mesmerised, child-like
Innocently filming speed
in that tail-head wagon
of New York City metro.
On that F train
No one stood up for me
As insults rained down
like fear.
Bemused, I was happy
back in the day
Oblivious
I didn’t yet know Race.
I had just met hate.
Tejas Yadav is a polyglot writer and scientist whose essays and poems have been published in Burnt Roti, LiveWire, Borderless Journal, Tiny Buddha & Literary Traveler etc. He grew up in Mumbai & has lived in Oxford, New York, Paris & London. He loves a good coffee and learning foreign languages.
You can find Tejas on Twitter @yytejas and at writejas.wordpress.com.