August 31, 2002

brown paper

i've always been told my color was white
wrapped in a starched white sheet at birth
the color just seem to stick
pale and fragile
easy to burn, i was always shy with the sun
knowing it would lick my tender skin
until it blushed like a hateful smack

still i played with the sunlight in the shadow of my room
and i tried to keep it as my pet
but the sun is an angry beast to little white children
and i turned pink with envy for all the times i tried to make it tame
i saw how the sun freckled our faces
laying them out across the regions of my body it befriended
congregating the bigger spots around my shoulders
from the many days i let the sun ride proud upon my back

but the day i sloshed my naked feet into the brown water of the Gulf
was the day i discovered the perfect mixture
of sand and surf to tint my skin to a warm lusty brown
but
it never lasted long
just till the grownups saw me playing
and they would say, “you are dirty as a paper bag”
and then i was dragged by the arm that i had free
to the front of the house to the same spot we all ended up
after we got dirty
the cement square to the left of the camper
stripped down naked in our own front yard

but there i saw the lines of white and brown stand out as they swirled around me
smeared across my shoulder blades and falling down between my legs
and i smiled,
pleased with the idea that i had almost made me brown

and that’s what i was inside
brown paper
i did not hate the white i was given
it cradled everything i knew, all the little things i loved
but my insides kept me turning with the desire to find my very own hue
and my body has always felt like the color of paper
like the grocery bags i colored on in montessori
those days reminded me of dancing like savages
shrieking like crazed animals as we drew our imaginations out
onto the soft bags of those decorated skins

when i am brown paper
i dance like i am free
my mind keeps singing ‘lovely’
over my cinnamon-e fields
the color of paper, my papers on fire
i’m a tasty little spice
hotter then i’ve ever been
moist and hungry we’re layin in the dirt
what a mix
sweat & heat with earth
to becoming even more

before - after