I AM

I am white and I am other.

I am Australian bread and butter

and Asian exotic.

I fit fully into neither camp

but grew up loudly naïve enough to make my own.

And that, I fully inhabit.

I am a woman

Who never stopped to think that

Women can’t.

I am a human who knows

I am also the whole world.

And, I am the awareness that holds it.

I am the honey skin envied by white and brown,

and the intellect that screams in defiance

At being defined

by beauty and colour

and improbable ideals.

I feel privileged and unsafe,

I know too much, so

I both stand tall and shrink under the gaze of men.

I am clear and confused

Which must make me

different and no different,

from you.

I am from a broken home

And a wholehearted mother,

my family straddles both sides of the river

which maybe makes me the hanging bridge,..

It gives me the advantage of great perspective.

I am undefined and middle born,

I am torn through the hearts of humans

Breaking over the whole world.

And I am made whole by love

That keeps knocking, because home

Will always call you.

And finally, I know myself

through hard-won looking, persistent listening,

ceaseless searching and incessant questioning.

I know where I belong.

Here, in my own center.

I am, I am, I am.

And I am willing.

To see you. To hear you.

To stand with you. To walk with you.

To fight with you. To celebrate you.

To love you. To make spaces where

we can sit together, in peace.

To understand and to be told by you.

We are, we are, we are.

Not one. We are dazzlingly unique.

But the same.