Where Do You Come From

"Do you know where you come from?" she asks me; "Do you know the founders of your own city?" DuSable I answer her triumphantly. She smiles. "But do you know where you come from?" My mother Tamika, my father Bernard. "I ask where do you come from, not what city you hail from, not whose loins you sprung from--" where do YOU come from I ask of her. "I come from hot days and golden dirt; I come from green pastures and strange seas. I come from forced masters and bleeding feet, bleeding knees from when I was forced to bow and submit to the male above me. Left with only a memory of a memory; left to only imagine the days of a colorful party; My colors red, black, and green, feet moving to a beat that was weaved into me. Where the only CRACK was the flame as we danced along it, no name to the song, we just sung it; voices lifted high to the night sky which once considered beautiful. My blackness, this black skin was once considered beautiful. My spirit was free in it, but now this black skin is stained red from the blood tears shed from my days as a slave, shackled and chained. bent back as the whip CRACKS, leaving a gory Glory trail which you can follow to my manacled wrists, hands bruised and calloused from picking cotton and building homes I could not live in, given a roll I could never fit in. Uncle Tom is not my kin nor will he ever be one of them; he is simply broken and broken in, ashamed in his sable skin which was once considered beautiful. "Where do I come from you ask. I come from my mother's ashes, a Pheonix forced into a world that hates it. Feathers are picked, killing it, rebirthing it a Pheonix forced into a world that hates it. Where I come from this Pheonix is beautiful, my skin is beautiful, where you are beautiful. Earthen, golden skin, much like my mothers where black and white make gray painted in and on my sisters and brothers. Never hideous or ugly to be born into ebony." She raises familiar brown eyes then and I realize she's me, my reflection; reminding me of what it took to be free.