Today is just like any other day
I'm barely awake
The water runs as
I think of everything I don't want to face
I look back all the time
Remembering where I've been and where I've come from
My face is just a lie
My heart is seeking home

My home is my roots
Deep down within me
I'm a soul encased in white flesh
But there's a story to me

I try to behave
Everyday, all I ever do is behave
I remember in middle school
I heard on some women's talk show
That good girls don't make history
I would repeat that to myself as a teen
Now all I repeat is daily drudgery

I have expectations on my shoulders
And I'm surrounded by white people,
But I'm not like them
They claw onto their intellect
As if they know what suffering is
Their hearts are shiny, well polished glass
There is nothing in them
And they easily crack
No substance or meaning
Beyond their roles
White people, white people
With white souls

But I'm from Brooklyn,
does that make a difference to you?
I've known suffering
But not in the way some of my dark-skinned peers have suffered
I was just the white girl to them in school
My skin represented the source of their oppression
Some subconsciously hated me
I felt like a pariah,
I have always felt like a pariah
Clamoring to fit in

The best route to fitting in
I found,
was self deprecating humor
And acts of senseless rebellion
Or just becoming so quiet that no one would notice me
Now that I'm surrounded by white people,
Nothing has changed
They're the type of white people who glorify knowledge
I love to learn
But they are straight up elitist about intelligence and education
But what else can you expect from privileged white people?

My skin in some ways makes me privileged,
But I also am not the type of white
that comes from money
My family is not the type of white that is devoid of trauma
We're not the type of white who are bland, coldly intellectual, and superficial

But this poem isn't about flesh
It's about being ****** an outcast
Forever being misunderstood by a spectrum of people
While I deeply understand every person that crosses my path
No one seems to be able to understand me
And *******, that's lonely.