She says Black is the color of evil,
like a girl in a purple dress that never
reaches her long knees who
looks at other girls with short knees.
I should have been swallowed,
held by the ankles and
dropped into her fiery mouth,
looked at with bulging eyes.
She tells me I am the child angels whispered in her ear for,
talked of my betrayal and lust,
my rise to family altar as woman
praising women.
Ungrateful seed, forever sat in the bottom curve of mother’s stomach.
Will never see the moon.
Will never meet girls with short knees,
pretty purple dress,
pretty purple,
pretty.
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Khadija Ceesay (she/her) is a queer, Gambian poet from Olathe, Kansas. She is currently an undergraduate student at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas and will continue on to graduate school at PSU to study creative writing. She has been writing poetry since 2014 about her sexual and racial identity in order to understand herself better and owes much of the ideas behind her work to her relationships with family, both good and bad.