Maybe I drift through the sultry hours
of my neighborhood like I am more spectral than true,
corporeal presence, because in the absence
of similarity difference reduces me
to something almost inhuman.
Is this what belonging means? Before belonging
there were shaking hands holding a lunch tray, there was
looking at innocent blue eyes from across an aluminum lunch table
like they were monsters, staring hungrily from across
an endless steel-gray sea.
I have defined my own absent belonging
before I could even begin to contemplate its purpose. For me
a lack of belonging has always been rooted solidly in suspicion.
Suspicion spilling out
of the eyes of my neighbor, who always made sure to clip
his hedges when I was building imaginary
princess castles in the safety of my yard next door.
Suspicion drying the mouth of my would-be first friend,
my next door neighbor, who ran into the house as if
the sight of my skin like worn parchment and epicanthic eyes
were a disease transmitted telepathically
through stagnant Houston air, suspicion
from every person who deemed my family as distinctly other.