Black yet not black enough.

My in-between skin felt the lick of the Midwest breeze

And my bones – they rose and I fell to my knees

At sunrise, still dark enough for peace

And I prayed – for solitude and for belonging

And every contradiction, lost somewhere in the middle

In between

Because I never was sure what I wanted

Or really needed to do more than just survive

To be more than just skin and bones

And if I would ever find “home”

And if, maybe, one day, I would feel alive

And not a product of ideals or history

Or of the television voices that echo in our heads.

 

The ones that tell us we were born just to be dead

And nothing more than a vessel to melodies and gold medals.

Trophies placed on mantles and in glass cases

To which are worth is equated

But never our races.

Races. Plural. More than one.

We fit no mold or little box.

We are the in-betweeners.

Mulatto.

 

Bones – the same ones that float on the salty water of the Pacific

Where we worry too little about being black in the Northwest

And too much about whether North West is black enough.

We fade into miscellaneousness.

More than one. Not quite enough two.

My kind especially.

 

But I found peace

In the Book

And with thirty-three beads and a rug

And I knew exactly where I belonged

Even in between dusk and dawn.

 

Black mattered.

But my soul mattered more.

And I learned that we are all equal,

Five times a day and in between

Seven times around and in the same virgin white cloth –

One that values our humanity

Where no one man is lesser or greater

Unlike that one that once oppressed us

Torches and chants forever etched into our minds

The one that made us feel like we were just bones –

Bones with no homes.

 

But we are.

We all are.

Just bones. All of us.

Skin and bones, sculpted from clay.

I breathe – for more than these empty worldly desires

And I am home – when I pray.