A poem about grappling with mixed race identity, especially as a light-skinned person. This poem addresses the difficulty of having both the colonizer and the colonized inside one body, and how it feels to constantly be fighting yourself and other people's perceptions to find your identity.
--
I was born backwards
Body pulled East and West
My hands held on both sides, and
In the center--
An empty space
A concrete wall
The middle of the ring
I’ve got my gloves on and I’m fighting
I’m looking in the mirrors, I’m checking my hair
In the ripples of the water
In the bathroom sink I’ve got
Two eyes, two eyebrows
Two lips, one nose
I’ve got two nations
Two sides of a scale that is constantly
Tipping on one direction
More than the other
I’ve got light skin
Mountains made of my face, of my freckles
There are rivers full of blood
Full of bodies, full of me
Narcissus in the water, looking
Always looking at my other self
In the corner angling for a comeback
While I hold myself in a headlock
I see my grandmother in my face
White hair, thick lips, dark skin
Big accent
I want to carry her on my back
I want to carry them all on my back
The bowing bodies that are like mine
The ones I push over the side
The ones that lie down in the dirt
Fingers white as bone
As I walk over their stomachs
Crawl towards something new
Something different, a chance
A single opportunity
I pick them up
They fall back down
I’m Sisyphus
I can’t make a difference
I can’t even speak their language
I am a foreign object
I am the thing that does not
Belong I am the word that doesn’t
Sound like a word anymore
I am the trouble with continuity
I am the fat in the meat
You’ve found the bone
And now you’re not hungry anymore
I’m not one of them and
I’m not one of you
I am the girl on both sides
I am the body on both sides
Of a loaded gun, hands raised
Trigger finger
I am the lead in one glove and the
Lilac in the other
Swing big
Knock out
I spit my tooth into my own hand
