Originally posted 2/24/2012.
Original title, “The Names You Call Us.”

Whatever you decide about how we should look
is how we look to you.

Whatever you decide you can somewhat pronounce
is what we are supposed to call ourselves.

You pick a petal and call it a flower
as if calling out a part conjured the whole,

as if naming a peak
described the range — 

Pike’s Peak for the Rockies,
Mount Rushmore for the Black Hills.

What should I be called?
Should I let you buy me a collar

with “half-breed”
or “wanna-be” on a tag?

Should I shelve
everything I have lived through

so I can sit in your easy box and beam up at you
with your pink bow on my head?

Should I stop cursing you under my breath
when you aren’t listening?

Perhaps I should speak up knowing
none of it will matter much to you

as I seem to fit in this world
without really trying — no surprise,

I was taught how to try
from the day I was born.

In the dark I echo you,
calling myself lost, traitor, hypocrite,

but not for the same reasons you give.
I do it because I know I have had to give up

one half of all my contradictions
every time I have tried to fit in.

Call me the wrong name, call me
the wrong kind, call me wrong simply for being;

all of the names you call me in the dark,
or when my back is turned,

are names I have called myself.
You needn’t keep trying to kill me

with your words. I have already
done so much of the job

that I don’t know my real name,
what it means,

or how it might have kept me alive
in a different time.