From the Archives: “A Mixed Sestina” by Divinia Shorter

I was born to be gawked at and lauded: “How pretty!”

they say, and I grit my teeth, my multi-

cultural smile hiding fangs as they marvel at my skin.

This body of intertwining complexity

confounds them, so I prepare to be seen in halves

as if I am the part that splits their hair.

They always start with the hair,

digging their fingers around my strands, so “pretty”

and “good” that it can’t be from my “shameful” half.

I bite my tongue, withholding the multitude

of spiteful words burning under my complex,

overly-toughened skin.

They see my skin

and think it’s like theirs, making the hair

raise from my body as my complexion

disguises me. I have never wanted to be pretty

if it meant ignoring my multiplicity.

They only care when you look like their half.

To the other side, the half

that I am is not enough, my skin

too fair to hide the multiple

histories of my life, my “good” hair

too unlike theirs. Being this kind of pretty

makes fitting in a riddle that is too complex.

Some do not see my color’s complexity

yet claw at the invisible to tear me in half,

clinging to the part they’d rather see. My pretty

history is a sham, the birth of one with my skin

a mistake, like the chemical damage of my sister’s hair.

I never knew that pain could be multiplied.

I am not someone’s dreamed-up multi-

ethnic princess. My duality defies definition, my complex

DNA cannot be boxed. I will learn to love the thickness of my hair.

They think I am the bridge between worlds, half

of me tempering the other, but my skin

has bled too many times for being the wrong kind of pretty.

Now I search for the beauty in the multitude of scars left

on my skin, past attempts to dig out my complexities.

I have found the whole of me in the thick layers of my hair.

Divinia Shorter is a Towson University graduate with a B.A. in Theatre Studies and minor in Creative Writing. Published in Grub Street, her poem “Mixed Sestina” won first place in the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s national competition for closed (traditional) form poetry. A writer of many forms, Shorter spent much of her time working in and with Towson Theatre Lab as a dramaturg and Managing Director and is now the Literary Fellow at Playwrights Horizons.

Cover art by Denny Stoekenbroek 

https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Drawing-Afro-girl/420015/3069963/view