I saw it happen, saw the playground
bite through her dark dark skin.
I saw the children laughing, reflected
in the shine of wet colour from inside.

Perched on the lip, the brink of explanation
rests on the sharp edge of mum's Wilkinson,
and I carve the question deep:
Where is the true colour of me?
I slash at the wound to deepen
the excavation, and still red-nothing
pours out, quickly, as if to mock
the chalk of my skin with and paint
the most absurd keys, its pathway
an arpeggio of laughter, a twisted scale,
a piano concerto away from passing out.

The warmth of the cavern embraces
the queried finger that I push
inside, take it deeper, only to bring
it back crying foreign cherry tears.
The east of my self is not present,
no Samurai waits to cut out a wall
so long that space smiles its reflection.
No tribesmen bathe in my rivers
or paint their faces with my own,
and no stars crosses candles wheels
or pillars construct my hollow bones.

A power-shower jet erupts the cut,
washes away the inside, and I rip aside
the throbbing debris with Macleans' hard
brush, gagging at the sight of what I am,
of the colonial within, that stark ivory
that glistens its whiteness. So this
is the core: my leg pulsates the truth
while the bath swallows a pint of my past.

Nothing.

I am carbon dated stupid,
a white girl with a bloody leg
who doesn't understand the problem.
Hobbling to wretch, to hurl up the
emptiness of differences as delinquence,
to flush away the lies of unknown
and to fall a twitching heap of other.

Want to comment on this Poetry? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Poetry and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...