Layers of My Skin

-By Anabia Khan (Winner of Show Racism the Red Card competition 2024)

My skin is battered, my skin is beat,

Once innocent and soft, now dried to concrete.

I am suffocating in stereotypes and common ideologies,

Yet they expect my apologies.

When the police has no policy,

Is this what you call a democracy?

My life is built up these fears,

But I must hide behind my tears.

My skin is thick, my skin is tough,

Each dagger of bias makes me more rough.

Mockery and insults hit like whips and beams,

Yet my skin blocks out my sorrows screams.

I cry myself to sleep each night,

Keep my feelings bottled up out of sight.

My skin is scaled, my skin is burnt vast,

Time by time put in the furnace blast.

Scorch by the flames of humanity prejudice,

Showing courage and bravery means we are the nemesis.

Our ancestors fought valiantly so we could be here today,

Sacrificing all Rosa Parks, Mandela, MLK.

Yet they disgraced our heroes, our legacies blurred to lie,

Hundreds of years of oppression, forgotten in the blink of an eye.

But we took the tainted label and let them win,

We tried to change the colour of our skin.

Straightening the uniqueness from our hair,

Too Afraid to show our faces bare.

No matter how much we try to fit and we stood out,

But when we shouted for help, we were silenced throughout.

We tried to let the empty words keep us afloat,

Hours and hours of hard work, we would devote.

Yet the invisible chain of discrimination held us back,

Each day discrimination blows another attack.

So focused to fit in,

We sacrificed our culture, the true beauty of our skin.

My skin is scarred my skin is brutalised,

I don’t deserve to be dehumanised.

Every nasty word insulting grin,

And every sky cut deeper than my skin.

My skin is judged my skin is conceptualised,

As everyone’s hatred stares, I am paralysed.

I am judged by the colour of my skin,

No one dares to look within.

But I am tired of seeing lives shatter,

It is time to turn a new chapter.

My skin is beautiful, my skin is sweet,

We will not accept defeats.

Together, we will rise in this opportunity,

Create a safe space for all an inclusive community.

Layers of my skin, what makes me unique,

They have given me the courage to stand up and speak.

We may not all be from the same race,

But we can blossom together in the same place.

So anti-racist, we must be,

To move forward, we need to move in unity.

-By Anabia Khan (Winner of SRtRC competition 2024)