Who are you?

There is her


Who sits on her humble throne in the living room

Unknowingly controlling you all


She sits and knits and gossips


Like she used to do with her aunties and cousins

Back home


The home she left when she was 19


After the birth of her third child


The one they call your mother

So here you sit between your cousins

Chocolate brown and lily-white


You are somewhat brown


Olive, is what they tell you

But you’re more beige


Brown and white


A muddle on a paint palette


Not enough red or blue to make you human

A grey-green sludge on a page

No-one claims you

So you claim yourself

It doesn’t make sense that they call your brother

A terrorist and a paedophile


Yet you are exotic and beautiful


Your noses are exactly the same though

Not quite west


Not quite east


Just a little crooked with a low rounded point

At what point do they consider you human?

by Liliana Tucker

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