Mama Said - A Poem by Jeki Hadjon-Letor

I bent down, a precocious child, and picked the pamphlet from the floor,

‘Ethnic Minority Scholarships’ I read,

In that stilted way that children do.

‘Keep that’ mama said. ‘You might need it one day’.

‘Why?’ I asked. 

She looked at me - with withering love. I laughed.

To conceal my shame, I laughed,

In that ‘too loud’ way that children do.

But inside, I paused as something dropped. 

No. It fell.

Years of comments suddenly clear, a rising red of who I was,

Squashed inside a slew of slurs, they mocked,

In that spiteful way that children do.

So, a torn tide, I shrank from them, 

No. For them. 

Always conceding or correcting, but never just existing,

They partition my duality, they claim

In that knowing way that adults do,

That I must exist at their convenience, in a box.

‘Why?’ I ask.

I bend down, a young adult, and pick my suitcase off the floor,

A mix of strength and compassion, brown and white, I smile,

In that cynical-fierce way that twenty-somethings do.

‘Keep that’ mama said. ‘You’ll need that one day’.

Yes. I know.