I’m an American. I’m not African-American . . . I don’t know what country in Africa I’m from, but I do know that my roots are in Louisiana. I’m an American. And that’s a colorless person. —Raven-Symonè
You undress your skin easily
as if this ethnicity was a hoodie on a hot day and you thought it best to take off
before recognized or assumed.
When the weight of your identity becomes a burden, you refuse to carry it on this journey as a brown woman.
But who are we kidding? We were both the light-skinned girl everyone in school asked, Whatchu mixed with?
We were both on the playground when Billy Sanford pulled our hair and said we talk “white,” both the only black girl on the cheerleading team, and weren’t invited to the team sleepover.
We both got a rude awakening when our teacher changed our A paper to an F. But we stay trying to remove all this dead weight and tulle, all these centuries of Guinean beading, and Cape Town stitch-work like they don’t know where we were made.
We stay climbing inside someone else’s silhouette, trying to oublier / unzip this Monte Claire passing skin.
I will always be
the black ball gown in a room
full of white wedding dresses. I am reminded every day.
Against this taffeta backdrop of muted hues and random fabrics,
equality turns into invisibility the longer you exist.
Saying: I don’t see color means, I don’t see you. You have made sameness another word for silent erasure.
I do not want you silent, girl. Not when there is still so much so say.