Page 174 of The Black Flamingo

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Maybe it might shrink

to fit you, Barbie Boy.”

I decide not to pause for applause

and I continue, “As a young flamingo

I was given pink toys.”

I reach into my bag and

pull out the pink flamingo toy

Mum bought in Cyprus.

“My family loved me,

my color and flamboyance.

My difference was noted, not degraded.

It still made me feel separate.”

I deliver this next part directly to the toy.

“The Black Flamingo looks in the mirror

of the salt lake’s surface and doesn’t

understand why a shadow stares back

at him. He doesn’t look like the other

flamingos around him, he feels foreign

to his own flock, within his own family.”

I put the flamingo toy back in the bag.

“You look amazing, Mike!” shouts Mia,

and I spot where she, Simon, and Jack are.

“I know,” I reply, and the audience laughs.

“I always saw black excellence around me

and online but it didn’t feel like it was mine

because I was not perceived as fully black.

I felt queerness made me even less black.

Being both black and queer,

affirming that I exist,

I am here and I have been here

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