What Will I Ever Do for You to Love Me?

I’ve been asking myself one question,
Over and over, like a song that won't leave my mind:
What will I ever do for you to love me?
I look at myself in the mirror, trying to find the mistakes that make me unworthy in your eyes.
Is it the colour of my skin that frightens you? 

Is my melanin a weapon in your eyes?

Would you love me if I peeled my Blackness off like old paint?

Or would you love me if I peeled my whiteness off like an old poster?

If I bleached my truth, erased my ancestry,

Would I finally be welcome at your table,

Or would I still be the ghost that haunts your comfort?

But if I change my colour, the other side, might disown me.

I would be a stranger in both worlds.

Maybe it’s my name.
Maybe it sounds wrong to your ears,
Too sharp, too foreign, and too full of a history you don’t understand.
Must I change my name to "Peter"
So the airport security lets me pass without a second glance?
Must I speak your language so fluently

That you forget to ask where I’m “really from”?
Or if I called myself Hakim,
Would that make me less suspicious to the world?
Or more?

Maybe it’s my faith.
The way I pray. The words I use.
Maybe that unsettles you.
If I walked away from it, left behind the things that shaped me,
Would you finally sit down and share a cup of coffee, and speak to me like I matter?

Maybe it’s my nationality.
That country on my passport that makes you pause.
Maybe that’s what makes your heart close up when I speak.
If I traded my nationality in for yours,
Would I finally be allowed to dream here,
To walk without being watched?

I don’t mean to offend you with these questions.
But I don’t understand why you press your knee on my neck
Even when I’m already lying down.
Why are you chasing me away from the land I call home?
As if I stole something, when all I ever wanted was to belong.

I don’t understand why you call me a terrorist
When I’m just a child who loves football,
Who dreams of stadium lights, not violence.
You call me a criminal. You call me an outsider. But have you ever asked me who I really am?
Do you even want to know? Tell me, What must I do to earn a space in your heart?
Because I’ve tried silence.
It didn’t work.
I’ve tried being gentle.
That didn’t work either.

So now I ask with honesty,
Not because I want your pity,
But because I want to understand:
What makes me so unlovable in your eyes?

I wake up every morning hoping today will be different.
That someone, somewhere,
Will look at me and not see a criminal.
Will hear my voice and not hear a threat.
Will sit beside me and not move away.
And maybe, just maybe,
That will be enough for me to breathe fully again.

Until then,
I’ll keep asking the question.
Not because I’m weak,
But because love should never be impossible for those of us born on the wrong side of your judgment. What will I ever do… For you to love me?