my face-wash is a whitening cream
but what if i don't want to be white?
what if i just want my skin to be clean
since when did white and clean begin to come in the same package?
are white people the poster-children of cleanliness
because they've washed their hands
with the blood of my ancestors?

am i *****
because i have not?

it bothers me when my grandmother tells me
that i am lucky
because i was born the fairer one of the two sisters
she says she fears for what i would have looked like
had my colored mother not fallen in love with a white man
mixing her ***** genes with his pure ones
to create a mix-bred child, who, in any case
was better than being born brown.

it would have been a sin
for me to have colored skin

i am still dealing with the remnants of my colonial past
because i am still afraid of telling my mother
that i am in love with a colored man
she will accept him because he is loving and kind
but in the back of her mind
there will be a little voice that whispers
wouldn't it have been better if he was white instead?

and i've heard a lot of people tell me
"thank God your hair is the right kind of curly
not the frizzy, afro-like hair
wild and free
thank God your hair is tame
thank God your hair falls in neat little curls
(you got your dad’s genes!)
thank God
we can hold it
and mold it
into what we like
thank God your hair is the right
kind of curly."

you see my mom escaped by marrying a man with white skin
but with me the cycle begins again
because he's two shades darker
and my children will be too
the white genes of their grandfather
lost
among the dark genes of their father-
with chocolate eyes and hazel skin

i am still struggling to see at my father
as one of "us" and not one of *"them"