If you cut me into 16 pieces

1 would be Native American

2  Italian and 2 more British.

5 would be Polish

and 6 would  be Russian.

If you cut me into 16 pieces, like slices of cake,

you'd expect 1 to wear a feathered headdress,

2 to be adorned in green, white and red, and 2 more to be drinking tea.

You'd expect 5 to raise a shot glass

and 6 to suffocate you in their red flag.

If you cut me into 16 pieces, each one could be a baseball player

or the candles on a young girl's birthday cake.

If you cut me into 16 pieces you'd expect to see each nationality,

pure and full-blooded, neatly labeled and separated.

What you wouldn't expect to see is a reader.

You wouldn't expect to see emotions or ideas or compassion.

When you cut me into 16 pieces you reduce me to nothing.

I am no longer a human

A dancer

A writer.

You turn me into 16 different humans

And you tell me what each one should be.

When you cut me into 16 pieces you strip me of my identity

and dismantle every aspect of me.

You rob me of my characteristics and put in their place your conventional ideas of who I should be.

But I am a human,

and I am not meant to be cut into 16 pieces

or reduced to nothing

or stripped of my identity.

When you break me into pieces you destroy  the truth

and leave me fractured and misrepresented.

Misunderstood.

Stereotyped.