Hey, do you understand the urge I possess to choose a bright, fluorescent-colored piece of sidewalk chalk from a plastic bucket and scribble random esotericisms on your face? Sometimes I even desire to press my cheek against your roughness and slide downward. I need to feel the sandpaper-like composites of your being teething my skin. What color would I mar you?
As a child, I often streaked my finger down your course, unshaven face to feel the burn of a first-degree scrape. With each finger-paint stroke, did I become one with you?
I pretended I was chalk and that with each stroke pieces of me clung to your sharkskin-like epidermis.
So, you know, I believe we have history. We have intimacy. I don’t have a problem sitting, staring at your mortared face for unmeasurable time lengths. And when I am angry, I have no difficulty choosing a twig from the dead ground and poking at a pock in your face, watching the tiny grit pieces free themselves from your body, just as my own epidermal cells free themselves from my being with the smooth run from a loofa or washcloth.
But, I tell you, I have always been thankful that I am not a brick cemented into a place on your massive being. If anything, I want to be the brick that somehow works loose from the grout, frees itself from the sandwich of other bricks: the brick that the outcast protestor throws through the political office window. The brick with which the escaping prisoner smashes the prison door lock.
That’s the sort of brick I want to be.
Tell me, what do I have to regret if I am scarred in the process? Am I to be ashamed of the scars earned while helping others gain freedom?
No.
Never.
No, never.