Poems For My Brown Sister 2.3

Please view my preface of this collection of poems before reading this post.

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To my sister, 2.3

How do I be a sister to you? How do I show you the way in this world?

Questions I face each day, and more, to ponder my responsibility, yet boundaries, to help raise you.

My whiteness has placed a complicated yolk on my shoulders because who am I, a white woman, with a white perspective, and a white life to tell you, a brown woman how to live, survive, feel, act, think…?

I am not you, and I will never walk in your shoes—it is imperative I recognize that my whiteness means our lives may be different. It is also imperative I do not pretend you aren’t brown, or to say I “don’t see color” because that is a dangerous place of ignorance — if I don’t see your color, then I do not see you.

I guess that is where my role begins, pure acknowledgment that we are different;

but yet one in the same — family.

My yolk may be complicated, but my role as a sister may not be.

To love. Protect. Shine light. Believe in you.

It starts there – simple.

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