Is This My Country?

Born in ’92, brought home to riots and reruns,
Rodney King’s bones cracking through the TV glow,
America humming its favorite hymn: deny, deny, deny
while blood slicked the pavement like oil

I was too white for the black kids,
too black for the white ones,
too spanish when immigration is debated
and suddenly I was a foreigner
in the land where I was born,
a walking multiple-choice question no one
wanted to answer.

Peace officers turned black boys into chalk outlines,
Then news anchors said their names with the same mouths
they used to glorify wars on crime and excuse politicians.
I learned the lullaby of gunshots,
the bedtime story of “he was reaching for something.”

Classroom lessons were cheaper than State-funded cafeteria pizza:
shrink yourself, switch tongues,
be rhythm when they want rhythm,
be suburban when they want suburban
be invisible when they feel inferior.

Love was a roulette wheel of confusion,
her father’s handshake was either absent or a dagger,
her mother’s smiles genuine or unbelieving,
“oh, you speak so proper!” or “it’s just a phase”.
Even my own people said,
“pick a side or stay out of the game.”

Stereotypes stuck to me like unpaid tabs:
“angry,” “unwashed,” “exotic,” “not really..”
Every speeding ticket a possible homicide
every job interview a dog show:
smile, heel, don’t bare your teeth.

Though, I watched the poor whites bleed too.
Opioid orphans wandering Walmart aisles,
factories closed like duct-taped mouths,
but the bosses sold them a map to blame me,
and they bought it cheap,
like a six-pack at the gas station.

America makes us fight for crumbs
then fines us for eating them.
Still, my daughter now laughs,
and her laughter is the last honest sound I trust,
an unbroken hymn against the static.

Sometimes I thank God and hate Him in the same breath
because my daughter’s skin is pale enough to slip past the radar,
no cop will pin her down for a broken taillight.
No cashier will follow her through the aisles.

Yet it gnaws at me
like I’ve bartered away our color,
sold our story for her safety.
Turned centuries of struggle
into something polite enough to invite to dinner.

Is this my country? Is this my home?
It’s a motel with flickering lights,
bed bugs in the carpet,
a front desk clerk who smiles while keeping one hand on
the shotgun hid underneath.
But I’m still here,
because leaving would mean they won
and it’s the only home I’ve ever known.