Chameleon

When I was in the fifth grade, I knew a kid named Javier
He was black, which was confusing
He was an African-American kid who spoke Spanish, loved Country music, wore cowboy boots, played jump rope and had a look on his face that said:
I wish a motherfucker would say something
None of us said anything

For show and tell, he brings in his pet chameleon
When he walks in, the eyes of every kid glaze over
Like the windows to our souls shook hands with the winter for the first time

A girl, with box springs in her throat
Felt the silence was just too heavy for her fingertips to hold onto any longer
Drops the quiet like a suitcase full of habits that no one wants to keep
And says, "So what's his name?"
He replies, "I call him Rudy"
When the class realized that me and the lizard had the same name,
they laughed uncontrollably.

20 years later, the irony hit me over the head like an empty Heineken bottle inside of the bar fight that I call my everyday life.

I get it, you see, chameleons
They have the ability to paintbrush themselves into what ever will match their surroundings
They do it so often, they probably wouldn't be able to recognize a photograph of their own skin
They think it is far better to be invisible than to grind their teeth into "I dare you"
And to ride their bones like a magic carpet
no steering wheel, no tires, no brakes, no battery

Just bravery
Just faith and a chest full of "I am not dying today"

Courage has never been a chameleon's best attribute
And some days, it's not mine either
I was mentored by black men with brown skin
who turned yellow at the sight of swollen bellies filled with half their DNA

I was taught that a woman's vagina is just an underground railroad
to masculinity
That real men have tunnel vision and treat girls like subway cars
Like nothing more than a space to parallel park our genitals
A hole to bury seeds and leave orchids in our rear view mirrors

They say you gotta peel a woman like a tangerine
And your job as a man is to chameleon your self into her trees
Bite a piece of her fruit and leave the rest hanging crooked and confused

This is an apology to every woman I changed colors just to get inside of.

See, I still haven't stumbled across a definition of a man
But I know that we are hotels that stand a million war stories tall

I know that we carry guitar cases full of phobias
Hoping that we can turn fear into our strongest instrument
I know that our hands break things just as frequent as we can fix them

And we often forget that sexism is a family heirloom that we've been passing down for generations

As men, it is important that we start asking ourselves

What will the boys learn from us?