Skin Risk
I have powerful skin.
No more do I paint myself with colored powders.
I paint myself with blood.
I wonder: If I dressed like this,
if I dyed my hair like that, if I tanned my skin,
would you also name me with these words of ink?
Or, after so many words had run all over me,
would your drops of desperation and fear
tint my skin?
No more do I scream or cry. Now I laugh; I bury myself
in the laughter of those that survived so many years
with ironic laughter, without pure laughter.
How can they call me white? When I was a girl, I knew
that I had skin like wheat, like a peach.
Can so many lies and prejudices bleach
the tan from my body, leaving me
in whiteness?
No more do I feed forgetfulness, hypnotized,
blinded by the light that reflects
on my skin.
Why do you call me white? White are the papers
that they make from the flesh of trees.
Their inner wood, so vulnerable, has the same color
that my skin does.
White is the marble, cold, that does not bleed.
Do I have blood?
White is the freshly fallen snow.
My color is that of snow dirtied by the soil.
If this is white, will they make from my skin
papers on which they can note my "race"?
Perhaps I am the brown that disappears
when out of the sun, or the fabric that loses its color
after so many years of living without shade.
Or am I dirty snow?
~~~~AEW~~~~
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