Lucky

She tells me I’m lucky.

You’re so lucky

you’re pretty.

You’re so lucky

you have blonde hair.

You’re so lucky

you have blue eyes.

You’re so lucky

you speak with an accent.

You’re so lucky

you’re white.

I’m so lucky?

Her words

root me to the earth.

My heart cracks open

as my daughter tells me

how the girls

pick apart her reflection

at school.

The white girls,

the brown girls,

the blue-eyed girls,

the brown-eyed girls,

the straight-haired girls,

and the curly-haired girls,

the tall girls,

the short girls.

What she does not yet know

she is saying is:

I’m so lucky

I have Aryan features.

Those features

may have carried

our ancestors

through history's fire.

May have opened doors

that should never have needed

opening.

May have gifted me

a privileged white life,

but the price was steep:

We forfeited

our stories,

our songs,

our words,

our history.

What she does not yet know

she is saying is:

I’m so lucky

I fall into

society's beauty standards.

Those standards were

never made for inclusion.

They were forged

in the furnace

of a nation

obsessed with whiteness.

What she does not yet know

she is saying is:

I’m so lucky

I can sound

foreign-born

without being

foreign-born.

Because as long as

I am white,

that's what matters.

Or so the world

has taught her.

But I want so badly

to turn her around

and hold her.

Remind her

that sunlight lives

beneath her skin.

That her amber eyes

are lanterns

lit by generations

we have never known.

That she is all the more

beautiful

because she carries

entire histories

in her reflection.

That her dark hair

is not something

to bleach

or correct,

but rather

an inheritance.

She is gorgeous

when she speaks

both mother tongues,

because they carry

centuries folded

into breath—

tradition,

culture,

knowledge,

the voices

of grandmothers

and their grandmothers

before them.

Things our family surrendered

for the very features

my daughter

wishes were hers.

We cannot keep

feeding a system

that feeds on our flaws

while calling it nutrition.

I want to instill in her

a knowing,

a confidence—

that no one

is born greater

simply because

of the color

of their skin.

Difference

does not diminish us.

It enriches us.

We forget that

beauty

so often lives

in difference.

We are born

of the same earth.

We are shaped

by the same stars.

We are human.

We are beautiful.

We are one.

---

This poem was born from watching my mixed-race daughter struggle with the way her brownness is treated at school. It is a mother's attempt to remind her child that she is not less because of the color of her skin, the texture of her hair, or the shape of her eyes.

Difference does not diminish us.

It enriches us.

We are all made beautiful.