For Kylie’a
You who was born with raw knuckles and open eyes
who sleeps arms crossed and angry because you already know.
There will be a day when you slip into your father’s anger
like child feet into grown-man boots
you will stomp and scream and rage
and this rage will look foolish
except to us who also have black fathers.
There will be days you struggle with
knowing where you belong
for feeling like you belong everywhere
and nowhere at all.
There will be years when you feel bruised like worlds collided.
So, when they ask (and they always ask) what you are
tell them you are made up of whole worlds collided
supernova beautiful in its violent right to exist
violent like the night your white mother wrapped her privilege around
her knuckles
and reached thru the driver’s side window of a woman who dared to
rename you something hateful and pulled back
without a single scratch and with a handful
of blonde hair writing an apology.
Remember this when you feel far from her
(and you will feel far from her).
Let no one tell you that you must choose a side
that you are more of one or too much of another.
Enough is a foul word.
You will learn to recognize hate thru its sugartooth smile
recognize whose heart is a sundown town.
You will learn to skin backhanded compliments down
to their racist bones and leave them for dead.
Be sure to tell them
that you are beautiful without conditions
that you are valid
that you are no one’s token
no one’s tragedy.
Tell them this in whatever tongue is most yours.
Code switching is an awful party
trick I hope you never have to learn.
Remember that the opposite of passing is not failing.
The opposite of passing is overcoming.
The opposite of passing is permanence.
You aren’t going anywhere.
We aren’t going anywhere.
We fight too hard to exist.
Go ahead and show them the ways you collide
like you were born from it.