We are the inheritors of classifications
Of limitations
The official document sections,
Tick-boxes, real boxes
Reminders of who to be, or not to be
Where to belong, where to be libeled “imposter”
She called me “Black Sheep” once
The bully in fourth grade
My first experience of a racial slur
I trembled reflexively before I questioned
Here we stood post-democracy
Her spitting words walling off friendship
Ironically both sporting black tresses
Hers white, mine Indian
The afternoon class echoed in derisive laughter
But my speech had no jokes
My tongue’s twang wasn’t Indian enough
For the brown that housed it
For the brown that heard it
Ha imposter! “You don’t speak like us”
“You Larney!”
Apartheid’s pencil tests have divided us long after it’s demise
Divisions within
Divisions without
Oh those Boxes
Limiting
Isolating
Defining
No not me!
My blood is first the crimson of humanity
Beyond the Salwar Kameez
Beyond the Sari
It was birthed in the same crimson gush
Between thighs
That exists intercontinentally
It is the crimson of passionate embraces
The crimson of righteous anger
The crimson of energetic striving
The crimson of the bleeding broken
It will not be boxed
It will not be soft-spoken
It will not choose jollof OR dhal OR bolognaise
It will rejoice in all three
To be enriched; To be free…
Truly free…
Aaisha Mayet
Aaishah Mayet was born and bred in the City of Gold, Johannesburg, South Africa. She currently works in the Healthcare sector which, for her, has bridged the frontiers of our shared human experience. As a self-confessed bibliophile of many years, literature remains her teacher and her sanctuary
