Poem: Dear Greedy White Hands

Dear greedy white hands,

Because of you there are now

songs I will never sing

foods that will never touch my tongue

heats of my home that will never know my body

I will never know why my hair curls like it does

or why my eyes are this color

Because of you, I cannot shake the feeling

that this is a temporary home, this will always be

a temporary home

Because of you, I cannot fully love

the stripes and stars in my heart

but cannot dig deep enough to find my flag

because you tarnished it with salt water and shackles

I associate my great great great

grandmother’s story with those in my history

books because I never got to ask her and she

never got to tell

but that is all she could have been

based on the black ink on the pages of my books

Because of you, I will never know what the

reddish tint of my skin means, why my nose

fits on my face the way it does

Because of you, my grandmother doesn’t tell

me the stories of her life

because of you there is a silence

of storytelling in my blood

And now, because of you, my children

and their children will not know and

not know and not know and

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• heritage
• identity
• poem