What I Think About When I Talk About Face: I think about the paper bag test. How it still applies in my heritage. How when my great aunt, who had not seen me since birth, embraced me for the first time in thirty years with the words Where’s the light skinned one. My sister; one sunshade lighter than me.  A walk in the park (in a manner of speaking).  A parasol. My crinoline Creole primogenitor:: my people pride themselves on Europhilia, how close miscegenation sounds to population control and the manipulation of sex—a time in which these were the only tools a bag-skinned woman had at her disposal. Their remedy for Coastal Stockholm Syndrome, the scent of horse glue and sawdust—inhale – exhale – inhale—the only thing to separate the(ir) finer flesh from the dust-signed stench of darker skin. When my great aunt’s only son marries a woman whose skin bleeds out an oak tree, maple as berries, my great aunt waits.  She waits.  She waits patient, as a brindle retriever, until she is sick—as only a poisonwood woman could be—to wipe her shit across the walls of their guest room’s bathroom. To tell that shit-colored woman Clean it up. I do not ask what is my duty to this inheritance. I try not to be delighted when my winter freckles alight the quadroon in me.  But I know why I have no children.  I know why every man I have ever given passage comes from a kingdom I can identify on a map.  I do not ask where I come from. I ask: what am I doing here. I ask: what am I going to do with it.