My blood is not pure.

Siphoned through custom it puddles as an unholy poison. 

A mixture between castes that courses sin through my veins

Broken tradition seeps through my marrow

and pools black in the hardened pupils of my grandmother

As the years go by and we outgrow our old faces and our old skin and our old identities, 

I wonder to myself if we are really becoming new people at all, 

or if we are simply just accumulating more years and more selves 

It’s not January. It just isn’t. The leaves are green and dance together in hoards above my head, almost mocking me in their togetherness as I shrink into my loneliness.

You ruffled dress.

You lip glossed, 

clean tongued, classy individual.