I’ve had enough
I’m suck of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me
Right?
I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends’ parents…
Then
I’ve got to explain myself
To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn UN
Forget it
I’m sick of it
I’m sick of filling in your gaps
Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people
Fine another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make your legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness
I’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long
I’m sick of mediating with your worst self
Oh behalf of your better selves
I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self
Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die
The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses
I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful
Written by Kate Rushin, in “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color” (1981), eds. Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa
