I know this place
I live here
Where dresses wear deeper voices than suits
Where tattoos and piercings are shaded in rainbow colors
Where 7 closets have other shades inside of them
Then come out as bubbles and feathers at least once a year.
Where enemies pry on our pride
Pride we take to the streets
To meet family and friends
Where there are no gatekeepers preaching oppresive religious scripts.
Where we break inside because we can’t come out to taste the sun
That will reflect a spectrum
The infamous colors
7
CHAKRAS
LGBTIQA
The androgeny of the spectrum of life
That’s when the night crawlers are all over
Hunting for our virginity
Haunting our consciousness to argue with self
Make believe that your difference is unacceptable to society.
Suddenly causing conflicts
Making war and not love
In the name of religion
Who formed these rules?
Who made me
And the feelings I have?
Well I live here
I love here
Where lipstick fluid
Grabs her hair with polished nails
Where meeting the girlfriend is accompanied by cutting nails
And she is looking handsome
Where fingercots and dental dems are hard to find
Where do we get them?
To protect ourselves too, you know
Where he cooks and gives it all to him
Biceps grip the linen
He’s seconds from is second coming
He was seconds from meeting his creator
With his face against the surface
When he thought he was a she
Where s/he or they and are likely to be ‘curatively raped’
paralyzed and murdered.
Where color covers pride and loss
In a form of foam on floats
Where the struggle differs for a person of the same queer gender but different skin color.
That is only the tip of this iceberg I call home
© Lebohang Mashifane
2017
Previous by Lebohang
inkanyiso.org 
This is powerful.