American Made
By: Khalisa Rae
“I’m an American. I’m not African-American —...I don’t know what country in Africa I’m from, but I do know that my roots are in Louisiana. I’m an American. And that’s a colorless person.”- Raven Simone
You undress your skin so easily
as if this ethnicity was a hoodie
on a hot day and you thought
it best to take off
before
recognized
or assumed
When the weight
of your identity
becomes a burden,
you refuse to carry it on this journey
as a brown woman.
But, who are we kidding? We were both the Creole
girl that everyone in school asked,
Whatchu mixed with?
We were both on the playground when Billy Sanford
pulled our hair and said we talk “white”,
both the only black girl
on the cheerleading team, both weren’t invited
to the team sleepover,
and we both got a rude awakening
when our teacher changed our A paper to an F.
But we stay trying to remove all this dead weight
and tulle, all these centuries of Guinean beading,
Capetown stitch-work like they don’t know
where we were made.
We stay climbing inside someone else’s silhouette,
trying to oublier, unzip this
Monte Claire passing skin.
But I will always be
the black ball gown in a room full
of white wedding dresses and we I reminded every day.
When you fall against the taffeta background
somehow equality turns into invisibility the longer you exist
in a backdrop of muted hues
and random fabrics.
Saying: I don’t see color means, I don’t see you.
You have made sameness another word for silent erasure.
And I do not want you
silent, girl.
Not when there is still so much so say.