Naturally

When you look at me

You see my white face

But when they look at me

They only see my race

Judging me for my curls

And thick curves

That compliment my shape

Theres an uncertainty

I bring

When I come to gatherings

Whispers of complexion

That give me attention

Thoughts of my privilege

My unspoken blackness

That make everyone apprehensive

I make you uncomfortable

With thoughts of how someone like me

Is even possible

How do I exist

How can I possibly live, survive

In a world so broken as this

Aren’t I confused?

What do I even do?

She looks so exotic

So beautiful

Better not fuck around with it

She might be taboo

God told the Israelites

No interracial marriage

Sunk pharaoh in his carriage

And to the Red Sea he parted

The tides

He said don’t intermingle

With beautiful women

Single, Canaanites

Because they believe

In something different than I

When I read these words

In my Bible

That I cherished

I cried

And sunk

Like pharaoh in the carriage

Of the roaring tides

Does God also think of me

As a burden

Is white and black meant

To fight

Because they see a different version

Does the God who says he loves,

So much that he is jealous

Really love me?

Because that same God

Made it okay

To use people as profit

And sell them off

Into slavery

And that same God

Abolished it

Two years after

1863

When two years before that

People fought to be free

And two years before that

Slaves were whipped on the back

To watch skin be ripped and bleed

When people look at me

This is the shit they don’t see

I’ve got two different people

Living inside of me

God told the Israelites

To kill off those canaanites

Because God forbid

They weren’t right in his eyes

And it’s because of things like this

That Israel is split

Why they can’t forgive

Because they keep taking

Each other’s lives

Is this the same occurrence

In America, modern

That we are in a pattern

Forever stuck

And continuing to shatter?

Should I blame God

Or the humans

That fail at loving one another?

Jacob climbed the ladder

He wrestled with the Lord

And became to the nation, a father.

Do I wrestle the same way

And climb up the ladder

So that one day

I may have my own little nation

Same last name

And be to them a mother?

I didn’t ask to exist

But I’m taking all of the hits

Words, cold stares

Awkwardness

Not fully fitting in

To the little equations

We put in boxes

And call it quantum

But math is never ending

Eternal pieces

It makes me so speechless

To think that as human beings

We struggle with shit like this

Because someone is different

That we can’t make room

For them to sit

And eat with us at the table

And share what makes us

Uncomfortable

And question if it’s a sin

For them to exist

Please remember this

I didn’t ask

Yet I get so many questions

What are you?

And I have no answer to that

Only that I am human

Hair on my head

Skin on my body

Eyes in my sockets

And a brain to think rationally

And so are you

It all comes naturally