Auntie used to bathe me like she was trying to wash the black out of me.
Years of miseducation, misrepresentation, spiritual genocide and she was still
Trying to wash me clean
She was still, trying to, Wash me down
Wash me brighter, Caro Light-er
She was still trying to wash me free
Made it seem like I could only be valued for my complexion
With little regard for my complexity
The sun, she said, burns away beauty
Burns darkness into you
So avoid UV rays
And don't raise your eyes too high heavenward
It will burn the white out of your gaze
Now, I was young
And too full of Icarus
And so I learned how to wait
Until I could slip my still wet body
Through the cracks of her attention
Stand on the veranda
Dust on my skin
Warmth written over my soles
Face upturned
And stay
Just to feel the way that browning sun could burn
I took it and I loved it
Deep into my skin
Deep into my body
Like the Vaseline my mother used
My mother, din't take that from me
Gave me a childhood divorced from cultural expectations
And the space
To allow my confidence to marry reality
My body was a place where I could be
Unashamed
Until one day, Aunty looked at me
Eyes like obituaries
Let them skate across my face as though she was witnessing some great tragedy
'You're getting dark,' she said
But made it sound like 'ugly'
And I began to shrink
Dissected my every molecule and atom in my anatomy
Invested way too much energy
Lining myself up alongside my peers
In front of mirrors
Impaling myself mentally
Wondering
Where is the abhorrent in me?
We all know that if the world is a stage
Then these bottles, pills
Chemical solutions are the poles which we cling to
And we are all stripping ourselves down
For the single bills and loose change of everyone else's approval
So frightened
Misunderstanding every day what it means to be 'enlightened'
So to be honest with you
I don't have a problem with bleaching
I have a problem with a way of thinking, that has broken us so far mentally
We believe a whole ethnicity can only be celebrated in one shade of skin
I promise not to hide who I am
In a world that has always been more than black and white
CauseI refuse to bleach away tomorrow
So some people can bleach themselves
Unashamed