Who are you, hiding there?
peeking through a curtain of legs
questioning my intentions

she stands hands on hips
wide black belt
pencil skirt in black with silver silken polka dots

her gaze
if anywhere
is down
her skin milky
her lips red
and a sharp pink defines her cheek
and that nose
and that hair
it can only be hers

I imagine what it might be like if she started to breath
if the faces behind her started to speak
and the jungle at her right
started to vibrate in color
and come alive

Like
the wind that moves my hair
like the roots that ground
this chinese elm into this desert soil
this thirsty tree
in the desert

We* are the chinese elm
finding a place to survive
because we obliterate the other
gentler ecosystems

because
we can
we do

bully
and bulldoze
and explode

whiteness
is a thirsting tree in the desert
not asking
assuming
all the water is for it
not gifting with respect
but taking with a raging heart
and the hunger of ghosts
that have been forgotten

III

The legacy of freedom that my four greats grandfather sought—
he did not know at what price it came
and he did not know that humans all belong to each other
and he did not know
what it would cost us that he forgot his home
and he did not know what it would cost us
that he saw himself
his god
as perfection
the standard by which humanity should be measured

A forest in the desert—
it does not belong
but it persists
it persists

until it cannot any longer

*this poem about my white legacy, my whiteness. We refers to my family, my american white people