Brown Flag

It was a shiny cardboard-bound book - lovely
The Princess clad in beautiful blues and pinks,
Princes with red capes, green mystical dragons
Mythical animals and wonder-beings, powered people -
A world was opened to me. Why then, would I
divorce myself from those dense magical woods
to the closed jungles within few choice books ?
There were no illustrations, the pages were torn, cheap
My child mind was selfish to like pretty things
That fed my imagination with blondes and blues
Yet I grew up, learning to love a language not mine
To love cultures not mine, but they kept me satisfied
Yet I grew up, but couldn't find companionship
With like minds, jumbled with the same mush
as mine. I encountered differences, and found
shame - Shackled with the knowledge that I made
A language that was not mine, mine.
Cultures that were not mine, mine.
That made itself home in my head, fearfully cozy
Playing the camel to my language and culture
and shame - to write in the oppressor's language,
as they said. I cannot blame that innocent child
As I learned that made a world in me - unique
Loving the English detectives, their parks and boats
Japanese kimonos and Sakura trees, the Buddhist
Monks in my country's east, their beautiful Mandalas
American native's fables, spirited horses over prairies
Even mine - the masked dancers with clever tongues
All somehow there, wrong or right,
I do not know - like the flags, black and white
Black death flags mourned by the Africans too
White that stands for death and rebirth over here
And a brown flag that never existed, for it is dirt
Dirt that I loved playing, before books, the net
Dirt that smells of that wonderful aroma
Got replaced by the plastic clay, though I loved it more,
It left stains and oil, and smelled bad indeed
Bad stains that wouldn't wash off, in my hands
Even as I prepare them for supper. It is not
The dirt that washes off quickly, leaving my hands
Fresh, like cut grass, the smell of rain, of home
While I write this in that same language
That pains me so, but I love so, and lets me speak
So I know that if there were to be a brown flag
for me, all my languages-cultures, that made me, me -
would be up there, written in invisible ink
And I will be proud of myself, for I made a tiny something
In this singular, short lifetime of mine.