Mixed Complexion- A Poem By Miracle Garren

What are you?

They ask me this as if I’m a new discovery that should be thrown into a petting zoo. They look at

me utterly confused trying to figure out the two.

What a unique looking human being like me could be

But once I tell them they completely erase both of those identities

Because it’s not what I seem, and I don’t fit into either of those categories.

Black and White, Creole and German-Jew.

They look at me seeing the golden girl with kinky brown curls, and think

“She must be Mexican”.

Is that what you see when you look at me?

A puzzle to be figured out.

But I know I still have the same question:

What am I?

Because it’s been thrown at me that I must identify as one thing.

But the truth is

I don’t know.

There’s always this conflicting part of me telling me I’m not enough of either.

Since half of me was born into the true north strong, and free

While the other into slavery to the point where my great-great grandma was a maid for this rich

ass white lady,

Segregation all throughout the ’50s from racism to 2019.

My uncle asks me why I straighten my hair

“Am I trying to look white”

While my black friends tell me “stop acting white”

I never said I was but maybe I was trying to be closer to one side or the other

I can’t live in the skin of both mother, and father.

But being a mixed kid is difficult some days,

Half of me lives through belittlement,

With the looks of almost being light enough

But still dark enough that you’re afraid to get pulled over by the cops

And the other half stand with privilege, lack of judgement, and white pride.

I am of mixed complexion, I am a mixed breed.

I am an almost who is bound to this skin that has a genetic disposition of uncertainty.

I am an estuary where brown blood meets white blood.

Even though all of these things separate me

And may not help me understand my identity,

I am still free, and I am still me,

I identify with two things because it’s what makes me, me.