O Darkness
“My arm is so brown and so beautiful,” is a thought I haveas I’m about to turn off the lamp and go to sleep.I look at it a moment in the soft glow, and see it, briefly,as though it belonged to someone else. A reddishkind of brown, like a toasted almond, only fleckedwith the fine, gold hairs of summer. And it occurs to me.that I have always loved the brownness of my skin,The way, just now, I stopped to admire my own thigh,its deeper tone against the crisp white of my cotton robe.As a girl, I wanted to be dark as my mother, whose skinshone against crimson, malachite, plum. I loved the waythat gold gleamed against her neck, the way dark skinforgives the accumulation of our years and griefs—and…
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The American Poetry Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, May/June 2019