You loved me in the open but not in the light
A half whispered truth in the heat of night

In the sun we’d pass like strangers do
But in your arms the world felt new

They saw my skin and called it mistake
Said love like ours was a risk to take

But we carried it quiet we carried it proud
Even when the whispers got too loud

I was copper and cream your forbidden hue
A prophecy some feared would come true

In Lusaka they’d see me as out of place
In Manchester rain just another face

But love was our shield and also our chain
Sweet as wine but it carried the stain

You kissed me deep but I felt the divide
Every touch was a war we both denied

They said my blood was a map of the crime
Drawn by hands that erased the time

A child of two worlds that never agreed
Born of the want and the power’s greed

Yet you traced my scars like a secret code
Found beauty in the pain my history showed

I wondered if love could rewrite the page
Or if it too bowed to the empire’s stage

We walked through St Louis on redlined streets
Saw the same lines back home repeat

Jim Crow shadows in Soweto’s dust
The same cold eyes that refused to trust

Our love felt older than we could tell
Carved in the same stone where our fathers fell

But you smiled like dawn through the heaviest smoke
And I breathed it in though I knew I’d choke

They called me symbol they called me sin
Couldn’t see the person beneath my skin

You called me home though the house was cracked
Every wall a memory the past attacked

I tried to believe we could outrun fate
Write our own lines on a clean new slate

But every kiss carried the weight of proof
That even love bends beneath the truth

Still I held on like the flag to the pole
Though the wind was tearing the fabric whole

You loved me loud when the doors were closed
But love outside is the love they opposed

In your eyes I saw what could be done
The merging of rivers into one

But in the world’s eyes we were still apart
Two nations at war in the same small heart

So I speak this now as the night leans in
Love isn’t free when it’s weighed by skin

It’s a fire that warms and burns the same
A truth too big for a lover’s name

I’ll walk from your arms when the dawn appears
With my pride intact and my heart in tears

Some loves are sweet but the sweetest ones hurt
And leave you with ashes mixed in the dirt

They said my blood was a map of the crime
Drawn by hands that erased the time

A child of two worlds that never agreed
Born of the want and the power’s greed

They called me symbol they called me sin
Couldn’t see the person beneath my skin

I wondered if love could rewrite the page
Or if it too bowed to the empire’s stage