White Blood Cells

My mother looks at me with a half-baked smile

photocredit- afropunk

She tells me the oyibo has replaced

 my tongue with theirs so much everything I say

now has a touch of innit in it.

She fears that I

One day will call her by her maiden name.

One time I woke up from sleep,

Mother greeted me first

Suddenly it felt like I had forgotten my manners in my back pocket.

Her eyes gave birth to a pair of tears

the day she waved me into the white man’s land.

She had sold the last of her hollandis to ensure I got there,

now she imagines I threw my heritage into a trash can at the airport.

Now she has comfort,

But what’s the use of comfort

when there’s a white blood in the body of your black son?