About a Woman

In this place

When people look at you

They do not see you

They look past you

They look at your skin for patches of your origin

They dissect every word that falls from your mouth

For clues to place your accent

They overlook your smiles

And the warmth of your heart

They look at your eyes, and the shape of your nose

For the road that leads to where you came from

For behaviors that match the stereotypes

Stacked in their archives

In this place

You are not a human

Or a brother

Or a sister

You are not a fellow citizen

You are the tribal marks inscribed on your face

You are the straightness or crookedness of your nose

You are the amount of melanin lining your skin

You are a caricature of stereotypes passed on from generations long forgotten

You are your ps and your fs, your h and your os

You are your ls and your rs

You are a geography

A measure of how much rain falls on your head

How far the desert stretches on your land

You are the thickness of the trees in your backyard

You are baobab, or cocoa or kola

You are not human

You are a place

A tribe

An ethnicity

You are not your thoughts or your mind or your heart

In this place

You are not you

You are a reflection of what you are made to be.

Naseeba

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