Greyscale

little girl age 3

Couldn’t be friends with me

Because of my skin tone

little girl age 10

Said to me on the playground

“You can’t be friends with those white girls - it’s us or them!”

There’s an awareness that grows with each poke and prod at the things that make you different and you can’t help but internalize the dissonance you feel when you just want to fit in but you never really will.

You have no choice but to grow up

Figure it out

Find your own place

Assimilate

Shape shift to fit the narrative of whatever context you’re in

Because when you have light brown skin you can be white to black folk, when you’re tan you can be black to white folk, but your features tell the race gatekeepers you don’t belong to either one.

And you don’t speak Spanish so gatekeepers of the native tongue don’t want you either.

I’m not the only one who lives somewhere on the greyscale

where the differences seem so small to us but so obvious to other people.

Together we live here, United in silence, blending in