Some days, my skin is a bridge. Some days, it is a border.
Some days, my skin is a bridge. Some days, it is a border. Joanna Boer, September, 2025, Open Mic, Foundations of Social Work, Columbia University, Professor San Emeterio Some days, it carries me across oceans from Trinidad, to Nigeria, to Kenya, to Michigan. A bridge between islands, continents, histories. Between my great grandmother who crossed the kali pani , born in a boat, to grandmother who survived violence and addiction, and my children who inherit possibility. Some days, it is a border. The gaze that says, you are other. The silence that falls in a room, when my complexion enters before my words. The limits placed on me spoken and unspoken the values placed on me measured against someone else’s scale. But some days, my skin is a bridge. It connects me to my husband, a white man I love, but who could never hold all that I am. It carries into our children the magic of resemblance faces that hold both of us, and remind me that borders, or ...