When I was born my grandmother cried because I wasn’t a boy

 

“My son’s life is ruined. He’s ruined.”
“To top it off she’s so dark.”
My cries were louder than hers. I was too eager to live.
An unwelcome troublemaker from birth

 

But that’s not where my story starts

 

A few hundred years ago, some men sailing on blue waters wound up on brown land
And they decided they’d walk on anything that wasn’t white

 

I remember scrubbing my face with a “formula” at age 12
3 tubes Fair and Lovely
2 tablespoon bleach
Countless years of colonialism shoved into my DNA
An old ancestral recipe

 

I’ve seen light-skinned become default beauty
I’ve seen makrani and bengali become an insult

 

Dad told me to wear a dupatta
Dad let me wear shorts on a different continent
Dad controls the length of my kameez

 

I remember being pushed around
My chachoo pinching all the fat he could find on me
Joke’s on him
I pissed on his bed when he was abusing the maid
I may not have a penis
But boy can I aim

 

My story started before ’47
Even before the start of that century
I was born in rebellion
They called it mutinous
But we bathed in the independence of our own blood

I was born in that revolution
I hear the sword clashes every day

 

I have been denounced for color
sex
and country

 

One time I flew a kite in New York
When it reached as high as I could take it
I let it go
I will not hold on to limits

 

I will let my hair remain dark
I will not buy lenses of a lighter shade
I will not paint my skin white
Brown is too fucking majestic to erase

 

I was born on the land of the poor
And I will not fool myself with the luxury of diaspora
I was born on the Earth of men
And I will not die with the gates of misogyny open

 

my name is Sana
and if you wept when I was a child

 

you will quiver when I am a woman