With our first breaths we are packaged and
itemized. We are placed on a conveyer belt and
processed through our adjacent existences
of Pink and Blue.
And I wonder what my color is,
as a person who is both, and neither,
and nothing, and everything.
Sometimes I think that it must be White.
I feel as though if I close my eyes
I will be absorbed into that nebulous space
where I am supposed to exist.
My brother and sister sit on opposite sides of the same room;
I look at them and see that I am neither.
I do not belong in this space,
and in this realization the void has never felt so harrowing.
From within quiet rooms I hear whispers
about my hair and clothes, and I
begin to feel certain that I have contracted
some deadly, unnamed disease
that needs to be purged from my body
through medication, exorcism, or persistent self-laceration.
For as long as I can remember
my lungs have been full of bitter, ice-cold water
and all I have ever wanted is to expel the coldness.
But how can I explain the crushing weight of being coded a 3
in the never-ending, clamorous stream
of 1s and 0s.