DIS/PLACEMENT

Mother, why do they stare? 

Blue eyes blistering my skin, a porcelain raft encircling me. Mother, I said again in meekness, feeling my voice trickle past her ears and watching her blonde hair: sleek, no stray aways, perfection to the wind.

Because you’re different. Every tone in her voice was a kaleidoscope of the many hidden meanings of different. It wasn’t like they told me in Elementary school, like the positive posters slanted on classroom walls “Be You, Be Different” - No, she wasn’t encouraging me. It was a warning and I felt it threaten my nerves, retreat like a wounded deer gone into hiding. 

My mother would make spectacles of small things: 

Glances in public places: Racist, 

Compliments: Underlying Meanings 

Kindness: White Saviours 

I quickly learned to be seen as only a threat, and I began to enter rooms walking on eggshells, conscious of every movement I made while I watched my mother soak up the sun, she never seemed to have to think of her placement as much as me, but she reminded me, in every place we went, where I stood to them. I was a bleeding thumb among a bushel of roses. 

I never thought about how damaging the warnings and their subtlety could be, the repeated reminder of my displacement, the repeated negative about my skin, my hair, the body I had no choice to live in would constantly feel caged, I could never just be free, like my peers who chased boys or told little white lies. I learned to be seen and not heard, I observed and consumed the laughter around me, hyenas giggling in my brain. 

But now child, 

Here’s the real truth, 

I rewrote it just for you… 

“Mother, why do they stare?” 

“Because you’re beautiful”

about the poet

Taylor Williams (they/them) is an American-Canadian Poet, born in Los Angeles California.

Their poems stem from complex relations of loved ones struggling with addiction, finding and recovering from love, and finding oneself. The journey is bittersweet, but promising. Taylor currently resides in the South Okanagan, British Columbia ⁠— always writing, and redefining their world.