chelsea--gsa-blog

[chelsea--gsa-blog]

To some, racial ambiguity is a norm

If America’s a melting pot, I’m hungry for Brazil. The tropical heat brings simmering stews to boil.

Multi-flavored, multi-racial, miscegenated multitudes mixing to make a delicious meal

One to satisfy my soul.

Or at least, a good comfort food. Something warm and familiar to hide in when racial divides feel all too strange.

 My father’s mother—birthing mother—Fair as Winter’s breath and dainty as a pin,

Was never blessed with eyebrows, but with alabaster skin stretched taught on bone as white as coral,

A sun-bleached saint of glowing moral luminescence radiating within,

From silver sheen of sky-kissed pearls—the twinkle-dance of stained-glass light, auroral.

‘Twas the twinkle in her eye—or warmth condensed upon itself like slow sighs into winter winds.

Ancestry of this body remembers where she’s been.

But how I, so ambiguously featured, was spun from her gossamer thread few have ascertained.

You don’t look Dutch. I’m sorry I deceived you.

 Counter to her, woman black as velvet midnight sky,

Mothered my mother beneath the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

Dura Mater, backbone wracked, re-sewn yea high,

Broad-faced blueprint beauty—beauty at a cost.

Mama Africa taught her how to fly.

Father Portugal cast a loving eye.

Her beauty I fear I only partly gained.

Are you black?

 Why do you ask if you can’t tell?

What difference would it make to the content of my character?

Even if it made one, I couldn’t answer.

I know I am a person. You’ll have to figure out what kind.

 Cut me.

Drain my blood and measure it in ounces.

Separate it part for part—the diluted from the polluted, so together we can justify

My existence.

 My complaint isn’t my inability to check a box

But that we spend our lives living inside of boxes tricked into believing we’re

Only one thing. Only one culture. Only one color. Only one characteristic.

I am sorry to break the mold, but I am large.

I contain multitudes.

When your skin is torn in two and dual blood duels through your veins in vain

You inherit all the savagery and the pain of soil stained with slave blood and the hand that spilled it on the earth

Self-savagery and self-hatred

Your very birth is a beautiful abomination

Both a cruel twist of history and a beacon of hope for a kinder future

You are Both

You are None

Your body re-forged, reborn, unstained  

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