Skin

Thu, 06/20/2019 - 10:40 -- sb6312

Skin.

Skin is the thing that wraps our bones.

Molds us into an image –

Skin.

Smooth and everchanging, but never really changing.

Skin is what makes me a golden brown, beautiful and powerful.

Skin.

Is also what holds me down.

Skin is what helps you define me within your colonizing masterpiece.

Skin.

Is what makes me seem like I should be what I should be but what does that even really mean?

Skin.

 

I look at myself everyday and wonder who is this person staring back at me?

I am who I am and I’m who I want to be, but who that is is not what the world wants to see.

What am I to do if I don’t fall inside a box that I can check?

The world looks at me and doesn’t know what they should expect.

 

Mexican but not really. 

Black but not completely.

American but only temporarily. 

Where do I fall if I even fall anywhere at all? 

And how does my performance satisfy them all?

 

I say that I am Mexican so 

*valley girl accent* Can you speak in Spanish?

But my Spanish isn’t that great and my accent’s a bit famished.

I love my abuela’s Barbacoa** but I don’t know how to make it.

Am I truly Mexican? It’s almost like I fake it

 

I love my curvy body but the Church tells me I shouldn’t.

I don’t even like men, but “but that isn’t a woman”. 

I straddle this fine line between being and not.

But please, who gets to tell me who I am and who I ought to be.

You.

 

The society that holds me, binds me, molds me, moves me, use me.

Using my body and my being to uplift things that only the elite are seeing.

Told me 

Told me that all I’ll ever be is a Mexican hoochie selling coochie outside the movies –

Bruise me.

Put down my existence until I lose me, what do you see?

No that, don’t matter - what do I see?

 

I see a Chicana woman,

proud and strong

Coming to terms with the fact that she never did anything wrong.

America can’t tell me what I should be and Mexico can’t tell me what I’m missing.

But still.

I love myself and my heritage, Mexican and otherwise.

All that matters is that I see me through my own eyes –

Skin.

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