I see my skin. It's color. It's lack of color. Peach. Peanut Butter. Caramel. Foods of mixed kid tint. Faint imprints of the sun.
I see my skin, the lines etched into my palm like the rings in a tree, growing with age, proof of my aliveness. Of breath. A future and a past. The roughness of my palms, calloused fingertips from held down guitar strings, this skin has made sweet music. This skin sings. The scars along my forearm where the skin is softest, supple. Dark dashes from olive oil burns leapt out of the frying pan, this skin has cooked. Home meals to hungry mouths. This skin has fed.
I do not have a flag since halfway kids do not really get a flag and this always made me sad. I wanted to be able to hold my identity on a piece of fabric, to find the colors that made up my heart and paint them across my skin. To be made more than what I am, but know what I have been. A history book of my own people's lives, rules to follow, ways to talk, words to say, songs to sing, dance, food to eat, culture to devour until my blood runs thick with it. Give me an anthem to call my own.
Mixed kids are always made somehow to feel like frauds. When asked "what are you" I used to say nothing. Breaking my own heart, I admitted, I did not know. Made of too much and too little, apologizing for the space I took up and the gaps I could not fill, that is the story of halfway kids.
But when I see this skin, the history in my palm, music in my fingertips, stories etched in every line I realize I am writing the history book. I am at its' start. I am deciding the walk, talk, words, songs, ways of my people. I am hand picking pieces of the culture like fresh peaches from the tree. I am the decider of the flag, it is my hand coloring.
I see my skin and know, it does not lack. I am not nothing. I am more than one, two positives cannot cancel each other out, they form something greater.
I see my skin. My mixed kid skin. I see.
