The yellow light from their dusty living room lamp
glimmers on her newly painted fingernails,
deep purple polish.
She draws up a modest smile,
her fingers spread wide like an excited child.
She asks her lover, “What do you think?”
He glances at her dainty fingertips
right before he answers,
“You know, for a long time,
I assumed that black people
had all black hands,
or that the soles of their feet were black,
but then I found out that they’re normal,
just white, like mine.”
She curls her fingers inward,
nails digging into the white of her palms.
* * * *
He is alabaster from head to toe
and she has made no assumptions about the freckles littering his t-zone,
or the peachy-pink of his lips and eyelids, or the cool reds that flush
his neck and chest when he laughs, or cries, or naps
on their hand-me-down living room couch.
No assumptions at all about his white palms, chestnut brown hair,
and green, blue, grey eyes.
She wonders if he has always had these
visions of black girl
before she danced into his life.
Visions of black girl,
just all black from head to toe.
Black palms, black soles, black fingernails, an anomaly.
She wonders –
did he imagine he was in the midst of a negro spiritual
when he sang along to R&B songs,
moving his feet to the rhythm, his white soles burning red
as he danced across his living room floor?
Did he feel just as empowered when he sang along with black girl?
Moving to music that filled the air,
her people’s legacy, nodding his head
to the bounce and groove of rap songs from the radio.
She wonders what he thought about when he first saw
the kinked and coiled and oil black hair
floating like an ether atop black girl’s head.
Did he ponder the many shapes of black girl?
How her hips were wide and drew lingering eyes,
how her lips were warm and rounded like
fresh blueberries in the Springtime,
how her eyes were endlessly brown,
like pure soil from the earth,
her nose wide, her brown cheeks and chin
dotted with beauty marks.
She wonders if he once despised black girl
like the rest of them.
If he laughed with his old middle school friends
when they compared her skin to tar on
the blacktop at recess.
She wonders if he stifled his chuckle
when bullies mocked black girl,
comparing her crown of curls
to pubic hair.
Did he laugh, too, at the loathing of black girl?
At how she stopped in her tracks and held her breath
when they shouted “nigger!” at her
through their car window when she was 15?
***
“Are you okay?” he interrupts her thoughts.
She studies her fingernails again,
how that purple polish glistens
and glows against the subtle brown tones
of her skin.
