This, is to the woman at the bus stop
That was talking shit to my mother and I in spanish
As if my five year old ears were to undeveloped to understand the melodramatic hypocrisy in her vernacular
To the baboso, that called me a monkey on instagram
To the man
To the fuckingman that said my skin was too light to ever be a real brutha
My people
Don’t recognize me as their people
We do not find sanctuary in the same shadows
Do not find shelter in the same streets
Do not find security in the same songs
Do not find safety in the same silence
We do not mingle with each others demons
Because my skin
My skin
My skin
Changes with the weather
Maybe
Maybe I'm too radical for them to claim skin too dark and hair almost straight
Unfathomable to an unconscious brain
I am everything and anything
I am the yin the yang
The alpha the omega
I am the oppressed
And the reparations
Afro que nada
I am black and brown
And i will reclaim the nation of islam and aztlan
At the same fucking time
You will not force me to chose a nation
Ive been living out of brown boxes and black hefty bags my entire life
Its funny
How we can pack up everything that we are
Everything that we once were
And everything that we're going to be
Into boxes and bags and still call ourselves free
And this?
This poem here
Is me unpacking all of that shit
And I’d be lying
If i didn't say
That as soon as i was old enough to understand what race and color
Meant in a “post apartheid” society
That is addicted
To policing dismantling and oppressing all of the cultures that make up my identity
I knew
I knew that i could not just pick one
One fight one movement
One struggle to die for
I was five hair to my knees and nothing but wonder in my heart
When the same system that is militarizing our communities tore two halves of me apart
Se i know
I know it is not just you
Woman at the bus stop
Boy on instagram
Man that is too prideful to accept that my brown skin is just as deep as his melanin
See i acknowledge
Recognize the cards I've been dealt
I'm trying to check my privilege
But there is something beautiful in these scars
Something holy in this space here
Something divine about the trinity
That makes up my identity
So let's talk
Let's talk about how cuba and africa
Never worked together to fight against apartheid
Let's talk about all the black and brown folk
That don't live in damn near the same communities with damn near the same struggles
Let's talk
About all the underrepresented
Miseducated mixed folk
That look something like me
We just want you all to see
That we know how to breathe