Melt Call It Pretty

Melt Call It Pretty

With dark brown hair
that cannot change color even with the help of color
the added percentage to the majority of women

Tan like the rest but not like the ones who lie in beds
and burn, though not long ago, it was that pearl white
the pale blush blooming, that men call pretty

Not small not tall but just enough to see over the bar
just enough to walk like a woman in heels
small enough to shy like a child, like a girl

With no particular sound
but sometimes like a Brit when the feeling comes
or with a lilt like a hick because that’s the way we talk
down here, on the handle of America, the lower you go
the higher you are, until you’re in Mexico

No one ever goes there except on vacation
strutting slim bodies and swollen bellies in bikinis
still babies, someone’s baby
someone’s little girl

My mother told me when I was little
that I was a melting pot, a beautiful mix of things
and my sister said I was a coconut
brown on the outside and white on the inside

Caucasian, Asian, African American
pretty names in their places with a box next to each

I am the check
on those slips and forms
that sit, quiet and bored in a manila folder
I am the name printed across it
I am, Other