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.