moonchild

as if there aren’t politicians thirsty for my ethnicity, but not my capacity for love, as if this tongue that traces blood and salt along the necks of white boys who call me beautiful isn’t a double-edged sword, as if I didn’t cut out my mother tongue to make room for white cock, as if the light in my father’s eyes doesn’t go out every time I share a poem that he doesn’t understand, as if he didn’t leave his heart somewhere near the body of his mother that burned across an ocean for him to come home, and I get it. I get that it is impressive to master the language that once oppressed you, to march the salt back into the water as if your country was never stolen from you, but there is only so much I can swallow before I sicken, allowing you to feast on the gristle of my heritage every time you say that I am so eloquent.

It’s a Sunday night and I’m past four, and it seems like only I know what that number is for. But maybe this skin isn’t as thick as I would like it to be. Maybe someone else already knows me. Maybe I want them to. At least at night I do. But when the sun comes, I dress in sleeves. I don’t want anyone to know what it means. I don’t want to be me. So why would I  want anyone to see me?