Mixed Kid Poem by Ashley Davis III

Mixed kid, you think this 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 behind 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 around 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 syphon 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,
Tell it that when the world called it dirt it meant it could sprout new worlds
Apologize to your hair that you hid it in waste baskets
Pray to strike down those that allowed you to commit violence against yourself
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
Or even make you want to