Poem: 'Different, but their strengths meet in you'

Audrey Remle is a Mixed Race (Hunkpapa Lakota, Paiute, Japanese and Black) woman from South Seattle. Below is a poem she created for our Mixed Race Seattle webinar series, which Remle helped to co-direct and organize. 

A stranger in the back of the bus
Yelled loud questions at the girl
trying to guess her ethnicity

An inhale
An exhale
The mountainside steepened

She wanted to reply
her favorite food growing up
was Obaachan’s homemade inari

And she’d add, with a smile
buffalo were important in her tribe
and also quite tasty

Home was getting farther away

Children pointed, fox smiles wide
The God that loved them
had never loved her

Inhale
Exhale
The distance was lonely

Children learn from their parents
Depression is somewhat hereditary
The heavier your backpack
The slower you move

Inhale
She was dying
Running up the steep mountain
Silently screaming
Many different looking ancestors chanting
All of them pushed her forward

Exhale