your family’s dinner table

being the only brown body
at your family’s dinner table
is unsteady footing,
knotted shoulders,
sweaty palms,
silent prayers.

you’re well worth the discomfort
or I would have slipped away
long ago.
and your warm grip on my hand
under the table keeps me
rooted, allied.

but negotiations pour
down my neck and into
my synapses, lighting sparks
until my confidence turns to liquid—
sweat—

these people are good people
because they love you.
you, the only thing i know
to be worth loving.
and they endure me
because you love me.

i just cannot help but wonder:
if we passed on the street a year ago,
would they have seen me?

and all the practice i did
in school to be
a worthy opponent of conversation
a strong articulate woman
turns to mush and i am
reduced;
a girl
who wants her
boyfriend’s parents
to approve.

i wear dresses i have not worn
since pre-pubescence.
i lose control of my mouth
and it crumbles into “likes” and “ums”
and i am doing nothing
to help myself nor
my demographic.

i tell myself that i am
white-passing.
half-white is some white.
they may not even
see my color but
i survey the room once
and i know

i’m not
fooling
anyone.

then i beat myself up
for wanting to hide
my gold/my golden.

rinse, repeat.

i stay for dessert and for stories
of “sketchy neighborhoods”
and pray the conversation turns not
to politics.

like every member
of every family does.
and i see my family’s dysfunction in
their eyes but it is colored
with love. 

i endure these good people
because they love you
and you love them.

i want them
to be my family, too
but even a stranger’s eye
could tell you
we share no blood.