of me walking with this woman
who looks like me but who isn’t my
mother. And the black woman
standing behind us who looks like
she’s photobombing the picture,
that’s my mom. When we didn’t
have a colored woman to walk with
us, my mom would risk walking me
on her own. She would hold my
hand or carry me, but if the police
showed up she would have to drop
me and pretend I wasn’t hers, like I
was a bag of weed.
When I was born, my mother
hadn’t seen her family in three
years, but she wanted me to know
them and wanted them to know me,