Amyrah Richard

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Mixed Kids- Poem By Ashley Davis

Mixed kid, you think the hunt of black bodies does not apply to you?
You who have mastered a lost art of survival hiding in plain sight
Even if the white bodies at our dinner table breathe ease
Even if the white boss who knows us as half kin loosens their tongue,
We cannot hide what our whiteness has afforded us,
Can't deny half of ourselves and expect to be more than three-fifths

Mixed Kid, this whiteness that surrounds us has made us sick
Nauseous every time we look in the mirror
Because to think yourself a white person when you're not a white person,
Is a setup to fail, to fall, to get fired, killed, exercised from your own body
We can't just grit our teeth, we can't just roll our eyes
Cry that venom into a cup of white tears
It's the only way to siphon out the poison
Pour it down the drain when your mother says you don't have good hair
Pour it out when your cousin calls black people thugs

Mixed kid, we must teach our mouths to unlearn the silence we think protects us,
Tell your skin you're sorry for every time you wished to scrub away your melanin,
Apologize to your hair that you hid it in waste baskets
Tell your mother you're black
Tell your father you're black
Tell the world you're black
Do not stutter with shame
Tell them they can never truly love you until they see all of you
That to love us radically is to see us for the magic in our blackness

Mixed kid, you cannot escape your magic
So curse those who would make you think you could

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