Wayward

Beneath ill fitting flesh I'm a combination of muddled inheritance.

From a young age

My tongue has been trained

To form the sounds you struggle to produce.

 

I don't know what makes it more obvious

My name or my nose or my skin

Tinged that confused shade of olive.

 

My inheritance never seemed fitting to me

Why my father's darkened skin graced me as opposed

To my mother's milky, porcelein complexion remains unknown

 

I don't expect you to understand how ill fitting I am

When I can barely comprehend the misplacement myself

I am the child of refugees.

 

I am not accordian songs or circle dancing

I am not the acrid stench of slivovic

Nor am I your daughter, abandoner.

 

Am I the cries of ancestors in countless wars

Guns and prisoners and camps in 1941?

My grandmother was younger than I was then.

 

The parents of my peers have not experienced such horrors

My mother and father knew of death and destruction

Less than two decades ago.

 

I don't know how I can go from being that

To this

So I remain neither; I am the inbetween.

Author's Note

This really didn't say everything I wanted to say, so it may just end up being part one. I would honestly be deeply grateful if I could hear your opinion of it.