P!nk (T)Reasons 

Is it because I’m a woman of color? I ask genuinely.

When people say that, their first thought is 

“Oh, she must be black” and I’m a Latina.

There are just so many witnesses of black people getting treated wrong, and not enough people watching and seeing what they do to Hispanics. 

It wasn’t my first thought. I thought I would belong there just fine with the pink makeup, but wow, was I wrong. 

This was YESTERDAY and more than 10 people asked me why I was wearing makeup today.

Why cannot I do such self-pleasures?

 Did I look unattractive?

 Was that it? Or something more?

I shouldn’t be okay with that,

 and I shouldn’t be ashamed, 

But I should know better than most that people can hate just as much as they can love 

Don’t get me wrong, I love all the shades of the rainbow, every gradient and tint within my eyesight.

But sometimes those who are lighter than a beige makes me want to powder my face to the eggshell hue

 and make me seem like

 I’m darker than the simple tan I’ve been colored with as the few tones of skin in the crayon box full of pigmented wax 

that’s supposed to compare to the stained color chart on my hair-filled arms. 

Is it so wrong to represent my feminine nature? 

Am I too young to glitter-ize myself and make my body shine with pink rays for awareness?

People my age shouldn’t be part of the continuous line of hatred from the older kids we call parents

Don’t they get that if I were to impress someone, it’d be myself?

They won't ever know that I wear pink for the awareness

of the disease that took my loved one before I could grasp her touch with a vise grip of mine.

I’m not really sure what type of praise I’d get or if I would get anything physical,

For I am not trying to show out to the people

 who four years ago didn’t know half of the things

 I already did 

and back then still believed things that for me were unbelievable 

So maybe it isn’t all about my race, nor it isn’t about my forbidden parts I never consented them to touch, 

Maybe it’s just because I wear too much pink for awareness and the world has taught them a lesson I slept through.