Brown is a link to my African Heritage. A heritage I clasp so tightly;

I have to, the power of its bronze tone scares them. The potential, if left unattended will
blossom into a beautiful Jacarandas in Cullinan, or the Rainbow Eucalyptus.

Who could destroy something so resilient to make pulpwood? The trees have a story.
How many we kill in one day as a society?

The loss-too deep.

Look at Me, you can see the indigenous. You can tell by the rise in my cheekbones that
the mountain’s crossings made them pay a generational toll.

The ground softened from us trying to survive. Who do you think started the trails?
The ones you use that built Yellowstone. The real story, not the white man’s version.

Demolished,

Reparations for a casino tax-free, that you end up owning. A total annihilation, and it’s
the Black man we are conditioned to be afraid of?

Look at Me, you can see the white. You can see the pure whites of my eyes. I know that
somewhere in my past, an abomination laid skeletal in bones behind a cemented door.

I have been attacked from both sides,
“too white for the Black kids, too Black for the white ones.”

Where did I fit?

Look at Me, you can see Ethiopian. My hair ripples like sand in storm. Brown skin
turned dark meat beneath sun. A vision of beauty in the eyes of our Lord. A painted
landscape not seen anywhere else in the world.

Look at Me, you can see the kindness. The pain from having all this packaged inside.
You can see the struggle of day-to-day, a single-mother of four-finishing another
Degree, working full-time for the First, Black Female Judge in our County.
Allowing the sacrifice to provide them an amazing life, one better than mine.

     

Look at Me,
   and really see Me.