jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I wasn't mixed; my parents are just different
shades of the same color but she doesn't believe me,
and the man behind the counter silently agrees.

the old white lady that always takes the 5 train
stares at me curiously, her eyes say they don't trust me
and I don't understand why. I never thought I had to
explain myself to strangers or that my race was the most
interesting thing about me but that's always the
first question everybody asks.

my aunt told me the other day that I was jabao,
in other words, nobody knows what to do with me.
I am unidentifiable. my skin screams the sun and
stars too small to recognize; it says I am the product
of a collision between the blackest sea and the whitest sand.
some parts of my body sing a ballad so dark only certain
people would ever want to listen to. maybe these are the
parts that the old white lady on the five train is scared to
listen to. maybe the curls I tried so hard to straighten are
what terrifies her, maybe the black in my kneecaps keeps
her up at night, maybe the sound of boisterous music in a
language she could never understand makes her skin jump,
sends shivers down her spine makes her think twice
about who I am.

jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I was jabao, a mix of summer glow and
muted winter skin. but she doesn't believe me; says
she has never met a Dominican like me, that in some ways
I must be a mixed breed. and the man behind the counter
silently agrees.

(h.l.)

you are leaving again.
i find myself saddened without tangible reason.
and i know that with my sadness should come some joy,
and if not joy, 
then relief,
because when you are half the world away,
it becomes just a bit easier
to forget the times when you were so painfully closer.
i can look up at the moon — a pale phantom sliver —
and know that you do not gaze upon it at that same time.
in that moment,
the moon is mine.
i do not mind that the sun rises for you
so long as i cannot see it.
so i should breathe easy;
your absence gives me a little more room to love myself.

and yet —
there is always an “and yet” with you — 
when the easier breathing begs for entrance to my lungs,
i turn it away.
to forget you would mean to forgo grieving,
and god knows i live for a good ache.

so i think of you,
faultless in the dim yellow glow.
images i shouldn't call upon.
small, soft moments when you seemed to see me.
i remember the time when you crowned me with a halo, deemed me an angel.
i imagine that you are the only one who could ever make me believe that i fit the part.

glowing.
i don't know if you were but i was.
glowing.
if we have to share the moon, then so be it.

i find myself saddened without tangible reason.
this is the part where you come in.

but you are leaving again.
i could ask myself if you were ever truly "here,"
but it always hurts the most to ask the questions i already know the answers to.
so i think, instead,
of you,
faultless in the dim yellow glow.
the pain is a little bit more bearable.
i imagine that maybe you were glowing, too.

(a.m.)

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.

O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.

They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.

Above all that is radiant and bright,
she floats above the New York night.
Neon signs and grey faces
look up, pointing, exclaming,
'Look how amazing
the human race is'.

Phantom girl floating, sifting
past and through all that's drifting:
empty eyes and the cracks on
every sunken, cigarette *******
ivory American cheek-bone,
belonging to a person, who
feels like any person: here
but sweetly alone.

All that is radiant,
all that is bright,
think what is beautiful
is flying past and
out of sight.