Where is your compassion By Fabian stennett

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“Where Is Your Compassion?” — A Cry from the Margins

By Fabian Stennett

They mocked me when I was ill.

Not with concern or quiet presence,

but with laughter sharpened like knives,

cutting through my weakness like it was a joke.

I lay in pain — real, raw, relentless —

and they jeered.

They made my suffering a punchline,

my body a battlefield they didn’t bother to understand.

And when I looked for empathy,

I found only performance and conditions.

They called my path a complication.

Laughed at my dreadlocks —

called them dirty, rebellious, unwanted.

But these locks are not fashion.

They are covenant.

They are roots.

They are thunder rolled into strands.

Each coil carries the names of my ancestors,

the prayers of Marley, the wisdom of Selassie,

the revolution of silence that refused to bow.

Still, they told me:

“Cut your hair, trim your locks,

then maybe we’ll help you.”

But where is your compassion

when it must be bought with my obedience?

Must I shear away my spirit

just to earn your medicine?

Must I strip my soul naked

to deserve a drop of water?

Where were you when the fever broke my spine,

when the nights curled cold around my ribs,

when I asked for help

and you handed me judgment?

I am Rastafari —

not your stereotype,

not your threat.

I am a temple in motion,

a song unending,

a psalm that does not need your permission to be sacred.

So no,

I will not trim for your comfort.

I will not bow for your bias.

I will not beg for your charity

when I deserve your humanity.

Compassion should not be conditional.

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This is a call — a fire, a reckoning:

To the healers who forget to feel.

To the helpers who require assimilation.

To the institutions that wrap injustice in procedure.

To those who see dreadlocks and think “unworthy.”

To those who mock the ill instead of lifting them.

Your compassion is broken.

And to the ones like me —

the outcast, the mocked, the misread:

Hold your head high.

Your locks are your crown.

Your pain does not make you weak — it makes you real.

And your faith is not a flaw — it is your flame.

— Fabian Stennett