Guest Blog: A Poem by Nkateko Masinga

I wonder if leaving home made me this way   

I am childless and wondering if I should raise my children here,
or even have them at all
if they will grow up wishing their skin was disposable;
with a label that reads:
“to be peeled off when blackness becomes too heavy.
caution: This world needs you to be lighter
than the brown you inherited from the soil back home
and the luggage you left behind when escaping the war.”

In art class I was taught
that brown is a mixture of
red (for the blood of those who died on their way here)
yellow (for the sun that also shines on those we left behind)
& blue (for the sky we all raise our eyes to).

In art class I was taught
that my body is
death,
sunshine
& prayer.

I am preparing for motherhood in this new home
that calls me foreigner;
my mother a refugee
my sister an asylum seeker
my uncle an illegal immigrant.
But my children will be called
beautiful;
with skin like mahogany,
like wooden floorboards creaking beneath their mother’s feet before the war sent her running
and running
and running.

___________

Nkateko Masinga is the author of The Sin In My Blackness.