Her porcelain skin reflects the light,

That is absorbed by everybody else’s deep brown around her.

She is not rich, but they think she is.

She does not know everything, but they think she does.

 

She thought things would be easy because she knew what she was getting herself into.

but now the stigma of race

Invades her like a mossy, invasive, fungus growing on an old tree stump.

 

The constant stares,

The pointing,

The following,

The "yevo"

They laugh at her discomfort

The assumptions.

They stick.

 

She’s big and small all at the same time,

She’s adored and respected and put on a pedestal

That she wished she could come down from.

She wants to be treated as a peer, as an equal, as one of the same.

She wishes that they could see the world

The people

The culture of race the way she has been raised to.

 

They are no different to HER, she knows they are equals.

but to THEM she is foreign.

She is white.

 

And that makes her always right.

Her side is chosen even if she is wrong,

Even if what she says goes against their own culutral norms,

Nobody argues.  Nobody protests.  Nobody stands up.

But a woman of their own culture?

Would be looked down on

Ignored,

Shamed,

Deemed unruly

 

Why can’t they see that their women are pure

Their women are the same as her.

Physical divisions are the only things that break them apart.

Their women bleed for a voice but are silenced.

Their women crave to be seen, but are covered.

 

She doesn’t understand why she can come in,

No matter what village

No matter what region

No matter what school or social gathering,

And people will listen

They will listen

Because she is white,

But their own women, their own flesh and their own blood, are never thought to be right.