Body

Our genetics are unintelligible, knotted so tightly and blurred so much they may never become clear.

Our genetics are unintelligible, knotted so tightly and blurred so much they may never become clear. Our grandfathers raped our grandmothers and the native man and white woman fell in love, generations back, and so here we are. With brown hair, eyes, and skin; or hair streaked with blond, hazel eyes and pale skin. And a question, a memory passed from father to daughter of a photograph lost in time, a possibility too distant to claim as one’s own.

‘But the technology’ you say ‘23 and me and the like!’. Yes, I know.

But in a society that despises your existence, something as unique to you as your genetic code must be hidden. Held sacred lest it be used to catch you in the traps this world too often sets for those who defy its control by being.

You make them furious, child.

By moving through the world glorious as yourself. By loving who you do,not who they want you to. By refusing to let what’s between your legs dictate who you are and can be.

When your stomach hangs below your hips and your thighs kiss like two lovers. When you listen to your legs as they refuse to be confined to the tightness of this compressing fabric, and you wear pants that stretch and hold your curves with the love of a mother holding her child.

It makes them frightened to see you loving yourself and all the things they told you should be hidden. And we all know frightened men are dangerous men.

And so.

We let our suffering be heard and ask for help and demand reparations. And we use humor to show the world we, too, are human. And we yell back at those who tell us to go back to our country and no longer do we stay silent when we see injustices committed towards others because we are able to see their differences and recognize their humanity as well as our own. And we understand that we are one, that we cannot thrive if any of us are not thriving. So when one of us falls, we go back and carry them across the finish line because we know no one can survive alone.

But there are always sacrifices we must make in a world that hates us.The time for phones tracking our periods and 23 and me has passed. For when you live like we do you can see just how thin the ice really is. We live our lives by the fragile rules we are given.

Here I am brown, there I am white. There she was rich, here she was poor.

They talk about reclaiming your roots but how can you do that when your family tree was chopped in half? Tracing three generations there, four here, four over there, and half are dead.

So we’re left with mangos in hammocks and roof tar.

We are all children of blood. Blood spilled, blood kept, blood hidden, blood found and blood lost. Blood dried on knees and blood thick in tubes and a promise of it being over soon. Blood orange and blood moon. Blood pact and blood hounds. Blood is sacred. Blood is sacrifice.

And maybe I’ll never know how big my slices of Native pie and Caucasian pie are. And I guess it’s okay because I sure as hell don’t wanna see my blood behind bars.