your eyes are lying to you
there is no one in heaven
no one on earth
who knows what i am
people are so obsessed with opposites, with pairs
are so obsessed with pasting on their bodies who they think they are inside
but what is one to do when they have no idea,
when their world squashes any attempt at cognition
that there is more than black or white?
when i was seven years old and i was handed a paint brush--
filaments flickering above my head, fibers kissing my fingertips--
and a muddy set of cheap paint--
broken, ruined, but a gift better than any i had ever seen--
i, like any child, thought not of the world i could mirror
but of the colors i could create with the magic laid before me
there is more than black or white
there is more than blue on the left, pink on the right
more even than the purples and violets and magentas in the middle
though even the most progressive individual will have a hard time believing this is true
there is green like freshly cut grass and red like the rashes it leaves me when i bask in it
yellow like the hot desert sun and brown like the freckles it burns in my skin
there is gray, like the clouds when i feel better mirrored in the sky than in my body
and there is nothing
like
the mantis shrimp
who sees more colors at the bottom of the ocean
than the human mind could ever conceive
as it shoots itself like nature’s bullet through the water
destroying everything in its path
because it cannot be held back by silly restrictions like
pink or blue
black or white
it is above-- and below-- such things
some people say that when they look in the mirror after a hard time in their life
they do not like what they see
it is not the image of the self they remember
that they felt intimately familiar with
but i have never looked in the mirror and seen more than a clay doll rubbing itself away into
smaller shapes
brighter colors
scabbing skin
anything it could think of to reflect the color shown by the fifteenth receptor
at the back of a crustacean’s eyes
i have never heard my name on another’s lips and thought
this is who i am meant to be
i have never checked a box on a form
and felt at all honest about myself
because i am like a danger, like a lie
like fright because people like so much to think they know everything in the world because at the age of four a teacher at the front of the class told them that the rainbow could be counted on seven fingers
R on the first, V on the last
but there is more than pink or blue
black or white
and sometimes when i am not looking
i think i can feel the shapes twisting inside my body
i think i can see the colors that are not on our charts
i think i can get away with never being called a name, or a gender, or an alignment
and i think i may be able to look in the mirror and feel like i know who i am
but each time i remember
that my body is a doll that i have molded into the prettiest picture i think i can show the world
my body is a filter all its own
and no angle
or lighting
no backdrop or sound
no binder or packer or makeup or jewels
could ever show the world that i am a tetradecahedron pulsing with light
the color of which i have never even seen