My skin is white
So you don’t see
My hidden black identity beneath.
You cannot fathom the oppression
Denial of the right to be.
All those times
Mighty White People
Looked down on me
My passport
My accent
My existence.
The time a border agent
Stripped me down and searched my bags
My body
For a hidden weapon
Because he heard me say a word
Of a wrong language.
Foreign is forbidden
Foreign is unwanted
Foreign is exotic
But only if you’re beautiful and rich.
I was sixteen
And powerless
The mighty border officer
Looked at me with a smirk.
Did you find my bomb
I asked sarcastically
No, but I still haven’t searched your backpack
Said he, reaching for it.
I was sixteen
And already a threat to humanity
Already ostracized
My white skin did not help me
Oppression is not about color
It is about power.
I was born in a wrong place
That was all it mattered.
I was told to go home
But there was no home for me.
Sometimes I imagine
What such place would look like.
Utopia
Of tortured souls
Where no one knows
Of passports and borders.
Pjesma je bila u užem izboru za UHRSN Human Rights Poetry Award i uvrštena je u eknjigu Respond: Refugees and their message to Europe.