You too perch at the very West
And gaze at the city
Maybe you’re searching for the one you loved
In that narrow silver street
Maybe you too are reflecting on who you are
When, dissolved in the crowd, you look up
Wondering about these people who live so far apart?
You kept both black and white on your skin
You didn’t have to choose
You are the black and the white of your skin
But when you tilt your head, all I see is white
Your ears, surely, are whiter than the rest
How many doors have opened for the sake of those ears?
And the other side, black, is often rebuffed
When you should have kept your head tilted the other way.
What is it about not knowing what to choose, not wanting to choose,
About imposing that sight of black and white, entwined?
Do you also, like me, live mixed, a transclass renegade
The one and the other forever mingled?
Both our solitudes fall as backdrops
My dear kindred cat on the esplanade.