My finger nails glimmer like fish scales as they dance across your skin,
They bite in tight leaving half moons like the delicate curve of a fin.

My heartbeat thrums like a war-drum beating hard against my ribs
Pushing the fire that burns through my veins to a rhythm that's starting to skip.

Memories of a place I know
Similarities in this far away view
I close my eyes and pretend its home
I close my eyes and I think of you

Pillows and sheets perfumed with your dreams
Together we fought and shadows we slew
I need your help to fight nightmares it seems
I close my eyes and I think of you

They see a lion, cold and proud
From the start I've seen you true
Kind loneliness you'd not say aloud
I close my eyes and I think of you

Sheets and pillows dampened with tears
Shadows so dark that I cant see through
Lying here in the quiet for what feels like years
I close my eyes and I think of you

Why am I called "white"?
Why am I an absence of color
To be associated with purity
Flawless innocence
A clean slate

Why am I called "white"
When I have the blood of monsters in my veins
There is nothing immaculate about my heritage
Simply from a lack of pigmentation
My hair is braided with the ******* of masses
My eyes see the broken lives of the oppressed
My ears hear the echoes of homelands invaded
And my hands hold the books with the historic lies enclosed

Why am I called "white"
Compared, as if, to the paper
On which my people's crimes could be written
Repeating so frequently with so many new victims
But we are never called to justice
And the cycle remains unbroken
When we are addressed
We stand up from our thrones, screaming
"Unfair, cruel, why attack me?!
I don't understand, what privilege do you see?!"
We act like the victims, fed by the system
And we eat it up with our metaphoric silver spoons

Why am I called "white"
I've been stained from the years of hatred
Perpetuated by a people who claim guiltlessness
Just because they are a newer generation
What was once called subjugation
Is now appropriation
But both are used to deny culture and rights from nations
But I won't sit by and prolong this delusion that we are any better
Any more beautiful then any other one of God's creations

So today you started with the why's, making excuses and reasons as you have every season since I looked at you, but now I see you and you think you can use the glint from that shiny silver tongue to blind me so you can bind me in your arms until I can't breath. And while you seem pretty qualified at splitting hairs and splitting sheets that doesn't mean you'll be splitting legs, not unless you get down on your knees and join this Sunday service, my body is a temple and you will worship it.
     It is not a crime scene to be inspected, not a base to be infiltrated and not fire to be quenched. The masses have called out "Sister art thou there?" and I have replied rising from what remains of my childlike mind saying,"Yey, I am the mosque, come to me and fill me with your joy and celebrations, but only the worthy shall enter my sacred halls and learn my holy obsessions." So don't think you can break me in because I am not something to be broken, not something to be dominated or overtaken in one moment of reckless inspiration.
     I see you shaking. Whether it's in fear or lust or just from the itch of dust forming on your skin from sitting patiently and waiting for the day when I give in, but just like you, it won't come. So whether you are wide eyed or tired eyed you will behold the glory that is within me, the strength that defines me and realize that I am baptized in the dawn of a new day. And you should know that I will not be coerced and as far as I'm concerned if you haven't learned by now that I am not your outlet, not just something to help you come around when your feeling down, your living puppet, then you never will. So you will never fill the gap between my thighs with your lies and turn around and call it love.
     Preach all you want but this choir isn't listening, it will sing to drown out the deafening sound of your screeching, so after hours when my church is closed and your feeling empty and alone just remember that next communion I'll be waiting for your confessions, and then maybe you'll receive my blessings. But before then my doors are closed until you know the difference between impulse and infatuation.
     So until the day when you figure out what you need to do and say, focus on your words, and not the way my bees talk to your birds.

In my chest there is a bird
Who's fluttering spurs all my words
A muffled song her sorrows sing
In ribcage trapped a fragile thing
My body is a birdcage

And butterflies, those wicked things
They dart around on razor wings
My insides now all ribbons be
My body is a birdcage

Translucent skin on hallow bones
And as time goes emptiness grows
A song once sung now no one knows
My body is a birdcage

Now windswept ribs begin to bleach
Sandshifted joints begin to preach
The heavens high a bird does reach
From what was once a birdcage