Adult

I’m most likely blonde, for I won’t have the time
To drive to the shop and wait in a long line
I’m sure the color suits me
Maybe it’s been years since I’ve read a comic book
Even as a bedtime story
To kids who look like me
It’s been years since I’ve watched Serenity
And maybe it’s worth it, if I’m something amazing
Maybe it’s worth it, if no one has to save me
Maybe the sacrifice is worth it in the end
I guess I won’t know, at least until then.

Identities

I am the girl, behind bookshelves in the library
only Batman to take away the lonely
I have two sisters, and a sorority
To push, and pull, and comfort me
And you may see my face and look my way
What does this white girl have to say?
And truthfully, I have not endured
what others may have persevered
But I know how a single word
left untranslated in a herd
of happy family on holiday
can express more than I fail to say
And I know that identity
Is a cruel limbo to be
It’s taken me years to understand,
You CHOOSE who you are and where to stand
And my baby brother, pedigree unknown
Will one day grow to be a man
Before than, marking scantron sheets
Filling the bubble next to the word “Hispanic”
Because that is family, that is it.
We are all who we choose to be
whatever labels stick are the ones we let be
And I will not suffer anyone to tell me I am not one
of any group or family I
have grown to love or been so inclined
For only I choose who I’ll be
And I choose to be every part of me
I choose to be my family
I choose to be the woman I am
Call it free will, call it God’s plan
I choose to be every piece of me
In a slapdash collage of poetry
It may not fit in all the eyes
Of everyone who looks at me
But mine’s the only opinion that counts
And I happen to like my big mouth.