Shall we tall about the weather?
The torrents that surround you
How it feels to be battered by hail
What happens when the wind won't stop?
The ruination of inner structures
Corroded from the outside
Worn down from continually shoring within
Invisible and unseen fragility wrapped in rage
Walls rebuilt time and again
Can only take so much.
What happens when it rains
A storm, a flood
A constant grey mizzle?
With occasional sunshine
Scars enveloped by the warmth of tender hearts
A canopy of blossoms fed by the light
Until it rains. Again.
And you begin to crumble.
Cracks are made to reappear
By the imposition of force.
Hammering, splintering, corrosive force
Tap tap tampering down through the layers
Impacting, compacting, constricting
Starving, harming, hurting.

Throughout time
and on and on.

Shall we talk about the weather?
Why you feel it more
Where it hurts
How we can make it stop.
Tell me. I'm listening.

Weathering = the impact of constant and relentless racism leading to premature biological ageing, via the gradual erosion of a person's physiological and psychological being.

As evidenced by the disproportionate deaths among Black, Brown and too many other people marginalised and minoritised by systems that ought to protect life but instead devalue it, selectively. I came across this term watching the BBC documentary, 'Why is Covid killing people of colour' by David Harewood.

Coined by Prof Arline Geronimus in her 1992 'Ethnicity & Disease' hypothesis, "weathering" describes how racism is literally killing people. I know this. I knew this. Learning this word though really hit hard in my heart. Hearing and seeing people describe how the healthcare system had dismissed them, turned them away, with eyes and ears closed, to the distress of a Black woman who consequently died in labour because of disgusting, misplaced stereotypes about pain thresholds.

Of a Black man who was denied the PPE he should have been given as an NHS healthcare assistant because his needs & rights were willfully ignored. Racism, in systems and in the minds of people in a society that has no excuse not to know better yet continues to allow people to die.

The despair, resignation and tiredness in the faces of people who have been advocating for change. The stories are there. The evidence is there. And still it continues.