Who could I’ve been if
my father had been there?
I’m now a senior citizen, 
my eyes well up 
when I think of my loss.

It really isn’t about him.
It’s about my paternal family
an intact large loving clan.
My paternal grandmother,
seven aunties, two uncles
and many many cousins.

Now I have their funerals.
I needed them alive
the family celebrations,
backyard picnics, weddings,
births and graduations.
My adult fantasy is childhood
summers with all of them.

Instead I spent my summers
alone with library books,
a single friend, swimming
and a single working mom.

I look like my creole paternal side
fair skin, freckles, curly hair 
not my black maternal family.
As a child I needed the
feeling of fitting in.
not standing out.

The silence around my
conception was loud
in my brain and around
my contemporaries I was
anamoly and a freek.

I dreaded meeting new people.
Strangers were taken aback with
the fairness of my skin, fine hair
and angloid features and had no
problem verbalizing their discomfort.

As an adult, I told someone to talk
to my parents if my looks were an isssue
and my black mother would take offense to me
not considered to be a black woman.

I know a lot of my reticence in life 
has everything to do with my childhood
and knowing this doesn’t change my interactions.
Like most people I have accept it’s who I am.