My skin is the color of long looks

A long look at the color of scalding chai in a floral teacup

That extra glance when I toe the line for what I ‘should’ be

My name is the sound of silence

A silence that is the sound of my country calling to me

The extra beat before they read it off the roster

My holidays are made of blank spaces

A blank space that is busting with joy, lights, and laughter

Unmarked on a calendar, overwritten by ‘National Flip-Flop Day’

My food is the aroma of pauses and wrinkled noses

A pause that simmers with spices, colonized for and yet unused

The silent disgust with which my lunchbox is eyed

The nothingness is all they seem me as.

A space that once angered me.

But this space is mine.