African Black Soap Burns Me Now by Dereka Smith
When I was a kid, I wondered if my mother ever questioned why the dermatologist told her to bathe me in bleach. Every night, she turned our tub into a pale cauldron and stirred me in foamy jaws—a frantic alchemist trying to turn flesh into hauled metal into fool’s gold. And my mother, with fierce eyes drowning in unspoken storms, witnessed this change. But, her hands were ever gentle, shaking each time with the weight of rituals she received. My flesh had become an archipelago of refractory blossoms—flimsy petals sopped in a cruel pallor that burned. A cruel pilgrimage of cosmic neglect is what I found in those baptismal waters. A rite in which my arms were chanting to a receding heavenly sky, still echoing the untouched stardust gap left behind by absent feet.
The cold liquid became my second shadow. Learning to move in the breaths between here/there, now/gone as both my shadows stretched and yawned across the tile floor. Now, I move through time-worn passageways, the bleach has long since been drained but its taint remains. Silently, I ask myself the question over and over again, an endless leaky faucet – a metronome synchronized with the hollow rings of porcelain dreams. The fantasy of the bleach-bold child ends with anything but a fatal flourish—merely coats upon coats on pigment fading. Chipped skin that stubbornly forgets the brush—and a world wide-eyed and watchful still questioning the purity of its palette.
Hear Dereka Smith recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:
I’m a burgeoning Mississippi poet based in Houston, Texas. My affair with poetry began in high school here, in the fertile ground of the South’s literary heritage. Now, I enhance my skills at the Imprint House based here in H-Town, where workshops with local fellows and talented writers are challenging and inspiring me daily to grow and expand my creative expression. While doing this, I’m currently working on my first poetry collection “Swamp Girl” which explores youth, deep reflections on childhood trauma, mental illness, spirituality, and the nuanced experience of being an African American woman in America.
