My children are white.
I’m just as white.
Writing it I’m not less white.

When she was born I said,
“She is so beautiful.”  He said,
“She looks like a white baby.
She looks, white.”

As kids
we thought we could
just stop using aerosol

hairspray. We ate
sno cones, sucking
the color out first,

tanning in the yard,
pulling our straps to see
our tan lines, white.

But the white people
left the lights on,
all night every night.

Burned up everything.
Burned through what’s
underground and dug

deeper. Burned up the sky.
Burned through brightness
into brightness, leaving holes.

The sun says, “I see you,
each and every white
one of you. I see you—
cancerous, half-blind, white.”