Being both means being neither,
it means running aimlessly
with your shoes untied and being
a bullet lost in a crossfire,
porque ser as duas é ser nenhuma
and it doesn’t matter if you
grew up cleaning your room
to Kelly Key’s CDs or if you
never left the house sem uma revista
da Turma da Mônica. It
doesn’t matter because you’ll always
prefer pepperoni pizza over
frango com catupiry, it doesn’t matter
because at the roda de samba,
you can’t sing along to everyone’s
favorite songs, or much less,
shake your ass like uma Brasileira
verdadeira num baile funk
because you are a foreigner
in any territory you enter
you are a forgotten cemetery
in the borderlands, you are both:
a thirsty field of orchids and a heavy
cloud that never pours—