Questionable Inclusion

There were moments I thought I was in a social experiment. But I never gave the researchers permission to include me as a participant.  

As I sat in there with statements becoming exclamations in

the atmosphere. My eyes stared upward as if the words had materialized. Materialized into a language unbeknownst to me and I had been tasked to translate, ‘wait what’ is what my facial expression read. Simultaneously I scanned the room to read faces with the narratives written on their foreheads, and silence selected by their mouths. Only a few are

privy to specialists of facial expressions decoding, not because they studied it, but because they live it.

I am too am a woman of Color, a Black woman who talks through the slight tilt of my head and furrowed eyebrows. Many unwritten and unspoken narratives when I’m in a room of diversity and questionable inclusion.

The decoder specialists will reconvene after to decipher and dissect…