Who Am I?


[Originally published in the Somerville Times & Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self]

if you peel layer 
                  upon layer
                           upon layer
maybe then and only then
you will find me...
for i am a multilayered entity...
a building block of heterogeneity 
i can be fierce and unflinching
              apathetic and also doting
                    docile and also volatile
                            lovable and also irritable
                                      compulsive and also discernible
I am a man
I am a “black” man
I am an American
I am a “black” American
I am a DNA test from
Ancestry dot com’s family tree
And twenty-three and me
I am African ancestry
I am Afro Haitian ancestry
I am European ancestry
I am the legacy of a middle class family in Haiti
I am the legacy of America’s social and economic disparity
I am the story of Horatio Alger’s characters thriving over adversity

I am a malady
I am a remedy
i am a rainbow
i am a shadow
I am a son
I am a brother
I am an uncle
I am an author
I am an educator
And pervasive human valor coconspirator
           I am in attrition
             I am in progression
               I am an amalgamation
I am perfectly imperfect
And imperfect perfectly
I am a thesis of social injustice
I am a vision of personal apotheosis
                  I am all this and more...

I am            ME!

Jacques Fleury is a Haitian-American poet, author, educator and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His book “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self”  & other titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc…