Sailing

Underwater is where I have learned to swim in the uncertainty of my ethnicity.

To be everything that my mother is and nothing like my father.

My mother never told me my existence was political.

That America was white.
That America too should fear my cries just as much as she does, that they would be in awe at every year after middle school that I wasn't pregnant.

I was born under absent sanctimony.

A legacy of trying to fork my stance into a country that I will never feel indigenous to.

I am split into two halves.

So I bashfully tucked my father in the seams of my navy uniform pants pocket, thinking no one should know that I am black too.

I’ve been told that I got "good hair" so I can't be black.

That my features aren’t black enough.

My body will always be an anthology of unanswered prayers.

But do not mistake me for martyr.

I be everything your mother told you to fear.

I have a mouth full of oceans.

I be two halves of the most dangerous kinda women
Salted and willing to the people who think they know me, told me that they didn't believe me, and ask me to prove my being black; I never asked you!
Like tides I have always been the rising activist and falling victim.
Surfacing and drawing like waves.
In sync and reaching.

Though I am still finding how to wear it proudly, I can admit that I am scared.
Scared that even in the absence of my father and gods selfishness I will be left with the notion that I will be never enough.
I'm sailing with open wounds and praying the sunlight will heal

Because that’s what I know, I know storms that always cease

I am both black and latina, I am my mother and my father

A child of the sea.

This poem is about: 
Me
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