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Took me
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thirty years to say
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I’m glad
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I don’t pass for white.
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Pressed
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those words into the dark
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creases
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in my palm like a fortune:
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a life line
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of futures I wanted to begin.
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Like the way
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the haze of summer heat
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makes
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a drive home different.
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Right now
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even the streetlights
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have a misty
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orb to them. Even
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the cigarette butt
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flicked out
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of the window
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on the highway
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plumes with embers
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skidding
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toward me
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like the tail
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|
of a backyard
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bottle rocket.
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I wanted my
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hair straighter,
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nose thinner,
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skin lighter.
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I thought this
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is what my white
|
|
boyfriends
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wanted as their hands
|
|
became
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each European request,
|
|
a Russian
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nesting doll I kept
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|
un-stacking
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until there was only illusion
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|
of beauty
|
split open. Like the Great
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|
Gatsby cover
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with the disembodied head
|
|
of a crying
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flapper over the neon-scape
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of city. All
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the green beacons we chase
|
|
as thoughts
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of people who don’t love us
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|
are left back
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drifting on the roads as we
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drive. But
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every muscle knows how
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to get home.
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How the smallest part
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|
of ourselves
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cannot be divided.
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The last doll
|
is still whole in my hands.
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Even the car
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can still purr from energy
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after it’s been
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turned off. What is left
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whispering
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in us, once we have
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stopped trying
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to become the other?
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