Tell Your Truths

By Kess Costales

TELL YOUR TRUTHS is the third installation of the EMOTIONS series of poetry collections by Kess Costales. The themes of this collection focus on identity and the different aspects of it, which include: 1) heritage (as a Filipino-Canadian), 2) heart (as a queer woman), 3) health (as an experience of chronic conditions and other issues of well-bei

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lady Lilac Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781999237660

Book preview

Part 1: Heritage

IDENTITY

If one was to deny my identity,

Does it matter? Does it change a thing?

Anyone can speak of doubt and disbelief

But I know who I am

and what’s in my heart

I know what my body knows

and what my soul has seen.

Anyone can say it isn’t true.

BROWN

Half of the year,

I feel as dark as shadow.

The other half,

I wonder if I glow.

When I was little,

They decided every title,

Said I was brown, not beige,

Not white or tan or anything in between.

I was brown,

And I wondered if that was bad.

It's not a harsh word;

Did they say it like it was?

SKIN COLOUR

The colour of my skin used to enrage me

Make me wish I was blue with bruises

Rather than this ugly feeling

they handed to me.

The princesses have fair skin, golden hair,

Eyes like the ocean and sky.

What do they compare me to?

The dirt, the dark, the sleek black night,

Eyes that are voids and hair that is long

Like a rope to capture, a wildness in me.

I am part of a loved and hated world,

A place of adventure and destination,

Not a homeland, not a nation,

But a place to explore and conquer,

To control and civilize.

They made me feel like a beast

Regardless if I was born on those shores.

Regardless of their definition

Of civil, of human, or wild or tame.

To them, we were not the same.

I held onto that to distance myself

From the world they claimed I came from.

I shouldn’t be ashamed

I am already too far away

And too deeply part of it

To ever escape.

It is in me and of me and it is me.

DARK EYES

The most common eye colour in the world is brown and so maybe that has prevented us from seeing its worth. We treat scarcity like diamonds, strangeness like jewels. We value the lightness, the colour, the brightness, and fail to recognize the wonders of prevalence and persistence.

It is strength and endurance,

It is untarnished and unaffected.

It is stubborn and shared.

CONSUMING

To stare into brown eyes is to realize

That you can see yourself in them,

That you can drown in the endlessness,

That you can get lost in this molasses,

This stickiness that holds true.

The darkness in my gaze

Is all-consuming like a violent storm.

It grips me and won’t let go.

I look into them and know

The details in them are secrets—

They're treasures, so take your time,

And search for them.

They're golden in the right light.

They're warm, they’re burning,

They're something earthly yet unknown.

SUN ON SKIN

Let me lay here where it is warm,

Close my eyes and take this kiss

That browns my skin and makes me bold.

Like this, darker, more vibrant,

You can’t ignore how beautiful I become.

I knew shame, I knew secrecy,

I knew what it meant

To hate myself for this lack of anonymity.

We grow up where we stand out,

Where I do not know if I should be darker

Or if I should hide in the shade.

We grow up wondering what’s right

And if we were born in the wrong.

Let me lay here now that I'm not afraid,

When I embrace the sun and its kiss

And fall deep in love with this

Knowing that I have beauty,

That there’s nothing wrong with me.

HOW THEY IMAGINE US

I am haunted

By images of children in cages,

By the conquerors through the ages,

By the belief of being less than human.

When I say we are wild,

That is how they treated that child

That they put behind metal bars.

Now we wear and hide the scars

of our ancestors.

We have houses and cities

Beyond the jungle and village.

We have spoken language

And written truth.

They think they shaped our people,

Taught us life and saved us from evil.

We aren’t wild or savage;

We are victims of the ravage

Of conquerors and war.

ON BARELY BEING BROWN

In my childhood,

I was always darker.

In my homeland,

I was much lighter.

I am brown here,

But not brown there.

And I will always appear

As an outsider.

PAPAYA SOAP

Scrub myself clean,

Try to brighten,

Aim to whiten.

It smells like fruit,

Reeks of shame.

BLIZZARD

When I was a kid,

We fell into a blizzard.

It was unkind to me,

A brown skinned little girl,

Faced with hurled hate.

I didn’t wear armour back then,

Didn’t know how to defend.

All I knew was the hurting,

The truth that this is

How they see me,

How they hunt me

Out for the heart

Because of my skin

My eyes my hair my face

Do not fit in their white world.

BREADCRUMBS

Look at the mess that I’ve made,

The breadcrumbs on my mouth,

The bloodstain on my shirt,

The promise that it wouldn’t hurt

When the world saw my skin.

When I realized that it’s thin,

That I don’t like the critical look

When I take a bite from that hook

With the bait that sang to me

Of beautiful places, lovely faces,

People who see no colour, no crime,

But I'm not your kind of pretty this time.

Look at the breadcrumbs on my lips,

The sweet cantaloupe I drink in quiet sips,

Wondering if this is what beauty is

To dine and see the divine that exists

In how we eat, how we drink,

How we feel when we finally think

About the oblivion

when we were