When I first met my elementary school bully

She told me my braids made me look black

I wasn’t offended like she expected me to be

I grew up worshipping black women in the limelight

Identifying with the closest to a woman who looked like me on the screen

 

So I said, “Thank you.”

Dragging my heart on the ground below me

Because I knew it was supposed to hurt

Or maybe it was because the words didn’t come from her mouth

She told someone else to tell me

 

She told a girl who I shared my name with but not my complexion

This girl says, “I think your hair is really pretty though”

She admired how my great grandmother’s hands still remembered how to braid

Hers traded that ability for hair products that damage her hair

But give her a socially acceptable style to wear it in

Something like my elementary school bully

 

The girl with the same name as mine had only known her identity as an insult

Had always known “black” as a slur,

She knew that girls like her and I,

Girls with different backgrounds, but similar cultures

Two girls with the same name

Were meant to suffer

 

But it seems like some people think that girls like her and I

Girls who share cultures could not get along

That our ability to wear hoop earrings like gold medals on our ears

Is some form of a stolen identity

And that immediately eliminates the idea that we BOTH suffer

Because someone has to suffer worse

 

Fake “woke” twitter likes to make it look like it’s us against them

When in reality it’s still us against us

Like “she stole my culture”

But how am I stealing my own identity?

Yes, I am made up of Spanish blood

But when Columbus took our lands his people brought their slaves with them

The native people, whites and black slaves meshed together their customs

They created my mulata blood

That’s why my people practice witchcraft that looks like voodoo

That's why my lipgloss is poppin like any other black girl

That’s why my abuela’s hands still remember how to braid

 

It don’t matter who has it worse

And this ain’t the fight we’re supposed to be spending our energy on

Attacking each other is exactly what they want us to do

To fall apart, to cave in on ourselves

So we never become big enough to tear down their perception of “those ghetto ass girls”

Because no matter how hard we try to separate ourselves

We will always be lumped into that category

 

So let us grow

Let us become so big our blood becomes a tsunami of same culture

Same ancestors

Same idea that we are anything less than

The people who made our gold medal earrings “cool”

Girls like my elementary school bully  

Who said my culture, our culture made us look like trash

But they’re still wearing OUR “trash” on their ears