harrowing
brown-eyed
darting into corners,
sweet stories
yourself
don't see
in the luster
of irises
forbidding intensity
stole twinkle,
kaleidoscopic looks and
now there's only
a testy glint left.

Some swoon for emerald green
Others melt for icy blue
Stormy grey and midnight black or maybe amber hue
Blended colour of different fleck

In truth, these tones are beauty
Yet none tempt me like another
It is brown, that draws me in
Colour tears through me; comforting and promising.

Traps me in a stupor
The colour of mahogany woods
Deep, dark and enticing
Luring my body into nirvana

Mysterious and evil
Eyes of eagle leaving me blind
Spreading rampant, this fire you elicit
Clouding my mind, invading my thoughts

Colour deep within
Hints of pain and vulnerabilities
No longer can I pretend
It is you from the beginning

Stones of your eyes, they rope me in
Colour of earth-kissed by rain
The hue of life that wrecks my being
Though I try, lacking it seems
It is brown, with wicked glint
Every shade of brown you could imagine
Glowing with warmth, reflecting mischief
Sending me shivers, pulling me in.

has no one ever told you that
your eyes aren't brown?

your gaze has borrowed from a hundred places
a colour i'd use to paint a million pictures
clay, i think,
soft clay from the hills and valleys
with the spring-kissed earth
on those postcards you send
only to the ones you love.
your eyes have every shade of colour i ever gathered
as a child from the old pebble beach,
and golden specks; i'm certain
the sun once danced inou.
the falling leaves of autumn
have swirled into the way you look at me,
teaching me new languages,
of storms, of sentiment, and of silence.
surely,
if the smell of rain was made of a colour,
your eyes would be its name.

did the fireflies learn from your piercing gaze?
i know i want to.
i know the stars slipped out last night,
with only your eyes as their excuse.
i've mastered the art of tiptoeing past
the crackle at their surface,
and into the beckoning flame.
a kind of candlelight;
searing at the edges, yet
gentle at the core.

I know you think your eye are nothing special,
But I disagree.
I love that they light up when you’re happy or when the light hits them just right and they aren’t just brown anymore.
They turn gold.
They shine and sparkle with amber flecks.
They turn chestnut,
The color of the tree we shared lunch under.
They turn the color of your favorite chocolate candy, streaked with caramel.
They turn to color of the coffee you drink in the morning.
They turn the color of the hot chocolate we shared one cold Friday morning.
And all these different shades of brown.
I especially love when they light up because of something I did.

They remind me
Of warmth,
Of your hugs,
Of a lot of other things.
All are good.

when i feel your gaze rest upon me
a weight is lifted from my heart
and another is placed upon my throat.
for when you (who is perfect)
and i (who is ******)
join eyes like the mixing of mud and
water
you steal my words and tear out my voice
imprison me within your sight
and i comply.
for it is you (who is perfect)
and i (who is ******)

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"

when i was younger, this boy used to tease me about my skin color;
how much it resembles coal,
and how it makes me look like an Aeta,
and how they can't see me in the dark,
but even before that i was insecure.
because when people bothered to look at me,
they'd only see ebony
and to them it was synonymous with ugly and *****.

but i don't blame them.

they're just caught in the current of colonialism
when we measured one’s status through the hue of their skin
and we followed.
we followed their discrimination of the ones whose skin didn't look like the exact duplicate of ivory and marshmallow.
we followed their system of supremacy of putting the lighter ones up in the stars to match whiteness with brightness.
we followed their standards of beauty which just happened to be the exact ******* opposite of our majority.

now our country is driven mad
by the idea of whitening your skin
until your heritage is nowhere to be seen;  
it has been scrubbed off by papaya soap,
masked by glutathione
and devalued by insults.
but hey,
who cares about heritage if you look like that European actress?
who cares about culture when you could pass off as an American?
who cares about natural brown when synthetic white wears the crown?