Dear Colonizer

Once upon a time, Jusaline Plasencia I was hyper sexualized & told lies about needing a gap between my thighs. I was told my sweet brown eyes & honey colored skin were no match for the blue-eyed, blonde haired kin. I was told that my curly hair was too wild, too free so they try to contain me, with hot irons & images of women who looked nothing like me. They told me I must conform, to a world deformed by those who filed my motherland & left our people transformed.

They said, “You are too short, too thick, too brown, too rich“ But never was I perfect in the eyes of the colonizer. But how can that be so? If I am the life & living image of my Ancestors' souls? How can that be true, when I am the reflection of a people so strong & so high valued? Oh colonizer, you mustn’t have a clue! But I am Juju! Daughter of the Earth & Ocean so blue! See these thighs? So thick & so true? They are that of all my mothers who birthed Warriors & lead wars too. See my arms? So strong and so firm? They are that of all my Grandmothers, who carried those armies as babies and made enemies squirm...

So to all my Brown sisters So to the colonizer I say: who patiently wait for the day to be free, My weight is no longer up for debate & my skin I say now it is time to stand up & eliminate no longer something you can hate. the systems of racist patriarchy Your words will not live in my mind, for I will obliterate that live within the realms of low vibrational the cataracts of self-hate that you thought frequency. would stop me from my divine fate. Our bodies no longer equate to linguist currency No, dear colonizer, that can be treated amongst people’s who look not You can no longer dictate Like We. my energy because I am brown and free to create, my own identity. For we are Daughters of Divinity, & when we look at our brown skin, We know we are more within than just what the eye can see.