#nativepoet

Too colored

That’s what he said

I would date you

But

Yeah

Well I really only

Date white women

And you’re like a 

Sista

So 

Right

He might have said

I was

Too old

Too fat

Too rough

Too many kids

Too broken

Called me a bitch

Or just maybe 

Too much

But

Too colored

This black man

Who sat across the bed 

From me

Any other thing

I would have shrugged 

Off

Rolled down

My almost brown 

Skin

Shook out of my 

Straight like 

Indian hair

Hair 

Cuz it was

Indian hair

but

Too colored

Really?

I was bait and switch

Cuz I pass for white

On a cloudy day

And my eyes

To my mother’s great pride

Are hazel

I get it though

As he said

He just has more in common

With white people

So

It wasn’t actually my skin 

That was

too colored

That was passable

Something else

The tilt of my chin maybe

The way my eyes 

Squint up into the 

Sun

That hard glint

That ancestral

Anger

Too colored

The set of my shoulders 

Reminiscent of loads carried

Even the sway of my hips

My hands made 

To husk corn

And flesh hides

Strong

unsuited for finer things

And my mouth

Of course my mouth

Wakialota

Talks a lot

Too colored

All my life

I  get it though

Really

That level of self hatred

You want what I always wanted

Whiteness

Even if by proxy

What my mother wanted

For me

And yours

for you

Get as close to it 

As you can

Don’t be

Too colored

Stay out the sun, honey

You have such pretty

Highlights

With enough peroxide

Little tinfoil packages

Pow Wow is for rez Indians

Practice your violin

Lower your voice

Stand up straight

Not too straight

Your skin is ivory

With enough foundation

Keep blending

“Mama, what tribe are we?”

“You’re Irish like your daddy.”

And so I was

But in the summers

With my cousins

I got too much sun

And nut brown

I was still

“Hey, here comes the 

White girl.”

They never saw

I was

Too colored

So back home

In baths of milk and baking soda

Leaching the tan

My mother tsking

I would envy

Those pale beauties

Whose skin would freckle

Proof positive 

Of their purity

Porcelain dolls

Full of fragile longing

Every princess

Every heroine

“Don’t run around like a wild Indian!”

But what if I was wild?

And brown?

My mother always knew it would 

Come to this

That I was 

After all

Too colored