Bomb Squad Investigates Dark-Skinned Man Recycling Paper

A poet decides to throw out some old manuscripts:

Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white Beetle with out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. … Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed.

…

That man in the parking lot didn’t even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. This is ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone who had ever met one.

…

I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.