Of a statuesque beauty with a skin of a deep dark blue hue, naturally pretty, yet wilfully unattainable. A tan so dark that it could only have been placed there as a middle finger raised to colourism and its practitioners, but nonetheless, the origin of some of her insecurities growing up.
Spreading those fucks to whoever she thought needed to hear them was something of a mission that started in her early teenage years.
She was proud of that West African chiselled face, presented to the world sharp and cutting like the iron of an always brandished sword, but really was more of delicate glass, a mishap away from breaking.
Everything she did, she did in preparations to fights that she always felt were imminent, making constant double takes over her shoulder even when no one cared. After all, she was “black-black”, the negroid still mocked in her day time cartoons as the cauldron stirring cannibals in 80s Europe. The negroid that was never at the apex of any power chart.
The magazines said she could be like Grace Jones; a fashion item of dark ebony wood drenched in beeswax for a few photos, an exotic object created by Vogue, but a vision away from the archaic dust and skins from the heart of Darkness. An alternative hardly in the middle of a sea of choices, but at least being desirable could come today, and being respected could come when it’s ready.
Equipped with this logic, day after day she stumbled through adulthood. Waking up to feel one morning ugly, one morning prideful, another one full of power, and at the end of the week feeling decidedly empty of thank-yous for the world.