“I wish I was Black,” she pouts,
eyes wide, searching for an approving smile,
as if her hollow words are endearing.
She’s looking at my wild coils, gathered atop my head
as she licks her Cecil Rhodes lips and latches on with her Leopold II fingers.
During her scramble for African features,
she excitedly touches her arm to mine after her Caribbean vacation.
She colors our conversation with an incomprehensible order of
issa, lit, savage, twerk, bae, yass nigga -- she’s even colonized my tongue.
She watches lip enhancing makeup tutorials,
backcombs a dreadful matted mane,
and salivates as she rips the plastic off her beauty supply bamboo earrings,
while wearing her embellished acrylics.
She sashays to praise as my low-toner facsimile,
expecting a cookout invite,
despite reducing my identity to my adornments.
At night, her “blackness” rests soundly on her vanity,
unfettered by diasporic distress.
How convenient.