Fuck the Rainbow

“Do you know what I want to do before I turn twenty eight?” He asks with a smile on his face.

No.

“I want to fuck the rainbow.” He states,

Absolutely straight laced.

And while I initially imagine the implications of this idiom, as a happy joyous affair.

He took my silence as an invitation and, in further detail, explains.

“I want to have sex” He says,

Pausing for effect.

“I want to have sex.” Again, “with a woman of every color skin.

I want Black

I want Spanish

I want Asian,

Indian,

French,

And I want them.

All those women.

Every single one before I turn twenty-eight.”

I exhale and sit up straight.

And I stare.

I stare at this mid-twenties, this white boy from Riverside,

This man whose face

smiles, devoid of color

Absent from shame,

His face.

Because I do know what that shit is.

Fuck the Rainbow is

“Black is beautiful!”

Sprawled out in bed

It’s the nopal and the beans

On my forehead

It’s dissecting my body and only keeping

My brown mouth,

My brown eyes,

My brown hands,

My brown breasts.

Fuck the Rainbow is

Kissing me to taste the

Spices you can supposedly smell

On my brown breath

It’s all of us.

All of us rainbow women.

Combined into one;

An experience,

An adventure to be had,

And never loved.

Fuck the Rainbow,

is putting the world in order,

dark to light,

and deciding which one to pick for the night.

Fuck the Rainbow,

Is the reason I am afraid to have sex.

Fuck the Rainbow

Is the slow blink my sister gives to men who ask for her name in messed up Spanglish.

Fuck the Rainbow,

is the words

Spanglish,

And Chinglish,

Hindglish.

Because blow jobs coming from different colored mouths cannot be in English.

Fuck the Rainbow

Is every person who has at one point been, only been their skin.

They are their skin when the sun steals it,

When the eyes of all who see it take a piece,

They are their skin when the world peels it

When skin is all people ever see.

Suddenly, as if though, he has just seen my face.

His eyes go wide and he backs away.

Hands up, he backs away.

Back all the way to my door.

Footsteps trudging across the floor.

“Are you sure we can’t start over?”

Voice broken and sore.

My door shuts, because yes.

My brown skin is sure.