The Colors of Me

Do not diminish me to your overpriced Starbucks order

Or Crayola colors named for foods and grains of wood

I bleed the same thick and velvety crimson

That you see splattered on the tv bodies of your screen

The same screen would have you believe

That alabaster nude is universal even to me

My skin is the color of a thousand souls, whipped and chained and caged

Faded by slavers and abolitionists who we called saviors

My cheeks flush with a burgundy fire

Flickering and filled with the cast of a setting sun

Each strand of my spiraled hair tinted in shades of all the ancestors

Eyes painted in the reflection of centuries of deep, unending wisdom

I am more than your cappuccino

I am more than your cinnamon mocha

These rich and decadent hues of my soul cannot be sipped for your indulgence

The supple tones of my skin are not a sweetness for you to savor

Generations of gilded melanin within me cannot be melted down to the simplicity of a candy bar

Cannot be boiled down to a topping for your ice cream

Cannot be steamed into a treat for your children

The colors of me are radiant and intangible

Delicate and fragile

Powerful and beautiful

I am not your cinna-mocha-caramel-cino.

I am all the colors of history, and all the colors are me.