Bi-visibility Poem
Two years ago, I didn’t even know about Bi Visibility day and last year I was still too scared to post. Now, I’m really going deep into what Bi invisibility/bi-erasure looks and feels like. For me, it’s that I can pass as straight. I can be in conversations where people ask me about guys, having kids with men, a future family and it’s not incorrect. But it’s also not totally honest. I’ve written a poem about it.
You ask me, ‘what guys are you into?’
It’s a simple question.
A classic girly bond.
Yet my heart starts pounding, my breath quickens.
I could answer, I wouldn’t be lying.
But it’s not the whole story.
I weigh up:
The energy it will take to come out as bi yet again
The ‘totally cool with it’ reaction
And the inevitable pause while we both digest
What’s just been shared.
I weigh up
Whether this person even needs to know
Whether they’ve earned the right to hold this precious information
And at the same time, keeping it from them
Further cements my shame
Wouldn’t it be easier to answer their question, swallow hard
And continue to live at 50%?
You ask me, ‘do you think you want kids someday?’
Not a simple question
And one that for most women can knock them over in a whirlwind of uncontrollable indecision and enforced surrender
But for me a further catalogue of parallel universes present themselves
As I try to imagine
And at the same time cannot imagine
What could be
How it could work
Not able to plan, not wanting to force
Wanting to let it all be, but knowing I have a choice.
I could make this really simple.
Or really hard.
You ask me, ‘do you not want to be in a relationship?’
And my heart sinks and rage fills my body
At the default setting of society’s Facebook status
I no longer know if my desires are mine or the continual diet of the algorithm, which shows me how life should be.
How to bring in another when I am still getting to know myself.
How to share that space, that time, when I’ve only just carved out space
For me.
You tell me, ‘I’m also bisexual’
And I realise I never knew
- assumed either way about you too
And it is the biggest relief and connection
To start to see
Other people who look like me
Who day to day have to fit a binary
Who are adorned with others’ checklist of what that means
Based on with whom they happen to be
So, let’s make it simpler
When we’re in conversation
Ask people where love shows up in their life, and be open to where they see it
Maybe it’s in men, or women
Maybe it’s in trees
Maybe they find love in the still hours of sunrise drinking a morning coffee
In deep connection with friends
Or swims in the sea
Love is love
And I want to feel free
