Visible–Invisible — They coded the child. She rewrote the file.

Content note: racial slurs, colorism, domestic abuse.
This poem is an archive of a childhood sorted by skin tone and utility. It uses a “case file” format because that’s how it felt — documented, not seen. It’s about the ways love gets rationed, and the small, stubborn light a child steals back.

colour coded

✦FILE 0009C — COLOUR — CODED CHILDREN✦

Subject ID: 0001C
Filed Under: Racialised Domestic Hierarchy / Invisible Labour
Status: Visible–Invisible
Redaction Level: High
Notes: Child misidentified as servant.

---

SYSTEM ENTRY — AGE: 6
Core Theme: When love arrives for some, others are erased.

She brought them home like prophecy —
 swaddled / pink / perfect.

Triplets.
Three white suns dropped into our brown sky.

“Hold them.”
“Don’t drop them.”

Not siblings — assignments.
Not love — labour.

They were porcelain.
We were children infrastructure.
We were siblings shadow-hands.

---

✦HOUSEHOLD VISUAL LOG✦

(breath marks indicate pauses)

They / rose /
  we / lowered.

They ate peaches from pastel spoons—
  we scraped crusts, knees to floor.

They had highchairs // halos —
  we had commands:
Say yes, miss / Speak clearly / Don’t embarrass me.

When the social worker knocked:
  flashbulb
  family
  fabricated.

Door shuts / breath holds /
we return
to the floor that raised us.

If love is a photograph,
frame the porcelain —
  crop the girl until only
    her hands remain.

---

✦SENSORY ENTRY — SKIN AS EVIDENCE✦

My white siblings floated
 on milk-light & mother-laughter.

I wiped their mouths
with hands still shaking from last night’s inspection.

She brushed their curls like scripture —
  she touched my hair like contamination.

They were held.
We were helped used.

We were not siblings —
  we were scaffolding.

---

✦EXTERNAL OBSERVATION — SCHOOLYARD COLOUR CURRICULUM✦

White girls burned themselves brown
 and called it glow.

Black girls said I wasn’t Black enough.

Teacher roll-call:
  What are you?
(always before
  How are you?)

I stood between teams
no one remembered choosing —
a blurred body,
wrong shade,
wrong shape
of belonging.

A country
with no flag but skin.

---

✦BATHROOM REPORT — SINK-LEVEL SELF-CORRECTION✦

Location: Stainless steel basin
Equipment: Lukewarm water / harsh cloth / silence

Climbed into the sink because baths were for other children.
Water hissed / skin burned / breath stuttered.

If I scrub hard enough —
  lighten / brighten / belong.

Brown peeled.
Pink flared —
  a false dawn.

Diagnosis recorded:
“Sensitive skin.”

Unrecorded:
attempt to bleach self into love.

---

✦STEPFATHER DIALECT — UNREDACTED✦

(Approved for racial trauma protocol)

No metaphors.
Only impact.

nigger
coconut
filthy beast
lazy Black nothing

Slurs swung like ropes in a house built on ranking.

The porcelain heirs were exempt —
  untouchable // already forgiven.

We were infantry,
marched by melanin,
punished by contrast.

I folded my spine into silence,
wondering when brown became burden,
when skin became sentence,
when a child became evidence.

---

✦ANOMALY — LIGHT EVENT, TIME-STAMP UNKNOWN✦

Morning cracked —
a slit of amber landing on my hands.

Chestnut / copper / ember.

For one breath-long moment
I wasn’t servant or stain —
  only hands
  holding light.

I kept that colour.
Stored it like contraband.
A private inheritance:

proof my brown could shine
without apology.

---

✦FINAL ENTRY — UNCLASSIFIED RESISTANCE✦

I don’t scrub anymore.

The porcelain heirs kept their fairy-tale frames.
I kept the sink,
the slurs,
the silence —

and still,
 this body
  refused
   to vanish.

They colour-coded us
to keep the story clean.

But I am the misfiled girl
who stepped out of their frame —
still brown
  still burning
   still building light
from every place
they tried
to dim me.

✦FILE CLOSED / SUBJECT CONTINUES✦