Hi Brown, Good Bi

 

to be brown and bi here

is to be contradiction

to be anomaly

they call me off-white

caramel 

coffee

exotic

 

they don’t call me asian

they call me straight

no way you’re into girls,

you’re pretending

‘cus queer is trending—

brown and bi

i do all the passing

 

i’m gonna start charing $5 anytime someone

wants to know my ethnicity or my sexuality

men be like

what are you, baby?

talking about my skin,

my caramel mocha swirl double frappacino kinda skin

thailand? yeah, i knew you were something foreign

what do you mean your ex-girlfriend?

oh, i get it. you’re curious, huh? experimenting

haven’t picked a side yet

let me show you why this one’s best

 

boy - bi 

as in

bisexual

biracial

as in

the binary doesn’t have room

for my kind of rainbow 

too brown to be white

too white to be brown

too straight for the lesbians

and too gay for the fuckboys

too both to be in your binary

 

fuck your binary

i want to bend your binary till it breaks

like stale bread

has to be sewn back together

with new thread

new name

 

call it spectrum

call me wave

call me lightwave

electromagnetic

call me sun rays

call me visible

 

except that my white isn't a wave

she’s half straight

 

half

is welcome everywhere

half

is welcome nowhere

half

is sorry for this poem, 

for taking up so much space

 

most days, i hate my straight white

my straight white who most days

wishes she was just straight and white

and most days

she can pass