Subconciously told that black is not enough.

I've lied to try and find love.

Yellow girl walking on the other side of the street, with cracked eggs at my feet -

aimed at the Yellow girl for Halloween.

Forced Spanish accents and proficiency with the lies to explain the chink in my eyes.

Trying to charm ignorant guys with false ancestry,

slurring my words and comparing myself to beauty queens or curly head girls on the tv.

Black wasn't good enough for me.

What is worse, hating who you are ? Or lying behind a facade ?

Told I had hair as thick as the Messiah's -

my soul burned to relax and melt under society's curling rods. 

I wanted to pass, be other; to be as light as my grandmother.

To inconspicously blend in.

My sores are raw and yearning to be mended. God knows I've lost friends.

All for the color and the stories that I've told.

This facade is getting so old. I didn't even let people get that close in fear of being exposed.

This lie may cause people to hate me, but don't mistake my statements from their pain.

I think I did it to keep myself sane. Take some fire off my name.

Take the heat off the little Black girl in class who had all the answers.

Who didn't have friends and was called the teacher's pet.

The lie worked for some time. Gave me some temporary friend and hi-fives.

But eventually those people all faded away, and gave me more pain than I had remaining.

No one questioned why my mother never spoke Spanish -

but would question why my siblings were darker.  Ask if we had a different father.

Because of this dynamic there was a division without their permission.

This incision in my skin is so deep, I wear clothes three times my size to hide my body.

Born to struggling young parents, they weren't supposed to be married. Let alone have me.

Little intelligent Black girl in the womb, listening to Tchaikovsky.

I am not the average, the portrayal or the stereotype.

No ringlet curls but not an Afro either.  I can't sing like Aretha.

I speak like I ate a Webster's. People might call me a "blipster"

The worst part is that nobody knows. This is a pain I've felt since I was ten years old.

I dream one day to scream from the tops of the mountains in the motherland how I feel at home.

How the sand in the Sahara makes up my bones and meet my family in Senegal.

Make sense of it all and bury the lies in Sierra Leone.

Let it sit, turn to coal and become the Diamond of Symmone.