By Mycah Westhoff

Do I really have to show it?

I’ll speed it up then I’ll slow it.

I’ll cut it down then regrow it.

So turn your eyes and ears and watch me own it.

 

Cuz I speak it, I scat it,

I slam it, I skin it,

I splatter, I sink,

I stretch, I swim,

I spit and swallow it.

I’ve looked in, out, up, all around

Bent it up, stretched it, smelled it, inside outed it,

‘I’ve put my thang down flipped it and reversed it’,

And no matter which way that I work it—

I’m a white girl.

 

But I’m not really white.

 

I’m not white like the 8 ½ by 11 going in and out of your printer white.

I’m not white like the W-I-T-E on your brand new MacBook white.

I’m not white like Clorox bathroom cleaner combo white.

I’m not white like Hickabilly hayseed, married to ma cousin white.

I’m not white like Casper the friendly ghost,

Like a saltine cracker cracka.

Like the dead moon, rising like

— the devil.

That kind of white is not who I am.

 

I’m white like Neapolitan ice cream.

Strawberry when I forget my sunscreen.

Chocolaty tan when my skins done peeling.

And during the winter—

I’m just straight up Vanilla Bean.

 

So whenever girls in High School used to yell at me to

“Move your skinny white girl ass!”

I just looked at them and smiled

Because I know that my ass

Is not skinny or white like that.

 

I’m not long blonde hair,

 poor white girl with rich girl problems white.

I’m short brown hair, with a short temper burning

Poor people kind of problems white.

 

I’m not white like Shakespeare’s “to mine own ambiguous skin color be true”.

I’m not white like the absence of color.

I’m white like my own damn color.

 

I am the battle between broken, mashed up Crayola crayons.

 Busted up, peeling and mixed,

Marking each other with waxy wax build up.

I am the haze of dirt, pick penned all over my blonde skin.

 

I am the first spring bud

Their stems anchored own with the pregnant promise of color.

I am the irritating shade of mosquito bites in summer time.

I am the foliage flakes of the last colorful autumn

I am the wintertime jaundice scooping fatigue out from under your eyes.

 

I am the morning time blur

Blinking to adjust to the alarm clock

With digital digits declaring lucky times codes

11:11

Because I— WE make wishes in our skin.

 

I’m the folded, molded pages of a picture book,

 The dirty now peeling papyrus of the wavy worn torn pages.

Water spots like moles across my spine.

Because you see, I’m no 8 ½ by 11

I’m a poet’s page, all filled up, rewritten, smudged and revised.

 

See, I’ve been in, out, up, all around

Bent it up, stretched it, smelled it, inside outed it,

Put my thang down flipped it and reversed it,

And I realize I’m still—

A white girl.

And no matter what I say here

We’ll leave here,

And you’ll see me later and say

“Oh yeah… there’s that white girl Mycah…

She wrote some dumbass poem

About how she’s not white.”