Bare Bones

They say that if you strip us down,
Take away everything recognizable,
So all that's left are bones,
We are all the same.

There must be hundreds of pictures on the internet,
The same skeleton copy-pasted next to itself,
Over and over again,
Bearing a different caption in each incarnation.

Caucasian.

   African.

        Gay.

            Straight.

                 Human.

The notion is a well intended one,
That we are all the same,
If you take our bare bones,
So we should all be treated same.

The message is wrong,
Both scientifically and philosophically,
At least,
If you ask me.

Our bones bare racial markers,
Occupational markers,
Remodeling from the time you broke your wrist when you were seven,
Immeasurably different.

We are the sum of the decisions we make,
The paths we choose to follow,
The paths we strive to make,
And that leaves its mark, right down to our bare bones.

As much as we may try to tell ourselves otherwise,
We are all different,
No matter how you look at it,
And that's great.

If anything it should be heartening,
The fact that what we do leaves an impact on the world and on our bones,
So people can read who we were,
So we can't possibly be forgotten.

We are different,
And that is a fact to be celebrated,
For as a society,
We are the sum of the individuals we all are collectively.

Someday we all must fade,
To return from whence we came,
Until all that's left of us,
Is the story we carved into our bones.