What We Lose

by Zinzi Clemmons

I’ve often thought that being a light-skinned black woman is like being a well-dressed person who is also homeless. You may be able to pass in mainstream society, appearing acceptable to others, even desired. But in reality you have nowhere to rest, nowhere to feel safe. Even while you’re out in public, feeling fine and free, inside you cannot shake the feeling of rootlessness. Others may even envy you, but this masks the fact that at night, there is nowhere safe for you, no place to call your own.

I realized that that was how heartbreak occurred. Your heart wants something, but reality resists it.

Before their marriage, Elma moved into the apartment in Philadelphia, but curiously all my mother’s furniture and knickknacks stayed. In personality and taste, she is a woman far simpler than my mother. I’m sure this was a deliberate choice on my father’s part. Most people can handle only one truly difficult woman once in their life. I realize the same is probably true for anyone I date.

To this big, beautiful, fucked-up country, especially my black and brown brothers and sisters: We gon’ be alright.