In the center of a harsh and spectrumed city

all things natural are strange.

I grew up in a genuine confusion

between grass and weeds and flowers

and what coloured meant

except for clothes you couldn’t bleach

and nobody called me nigger

until I was thirteen.

Nobody lynched my momma

but what she’d never been

had bleached her face of everything

but very private furies

and made the other children

call me yellow snot at school.

 

And how many times have I called myself back

through my bones confusion

black

like marrow meaning meat

for my soul’s hunger

and how many times have you cut me

and run in the streets

my own blood

who do you think me to be

that you are terrified of becoming

or what do you see in my face

you have not already discarded

in your own mirror

what face do you see in my eyes

that you will someday

come to

acknowledge your own.

 

Who shall I curse that I grew up

believing in my mother’s face

or that I lived in fear of the potent darkness

that wore my father’s shape

they have both marked me

with their blind and terrible love

and I am lustful now for my own name.

 

Between the canyons of my parent’s silences.

 

2.

 

mother bright and father brown

I seek my own shapes now

for they never spoke of me

except as theirs

and the pieces that I stumble and fall over

I still record as proof

that I am beautiful

twice

blessed with the images

of who they were

and who I thought them to be

of what I move toward

and through

and what I need

to leave behind me

for most of all I am

blessed within my selves

who are come

to make our shattered faces whole.