Jonny Appleseed

by Joshua Whitehead

I wish he knew that when an NDN laughs, it’s because they’re applying a fresh layer of medicine on an open wound.

You have to perform in any situation, so you may as well pick your battles. Hell, I played straight on the rez in order to be NDN and here I played white in order to be queer.

My hair is the mediator between my selves, my spirits, my brownness and my queerness, my sexiness and my disgrace, the scar of all our pain.

Funny how an NDN “love you” sounds more like, “I’m in pain with you.”

It was then I decided that love sounded more like a full stop than a semi-colon, and I moved too much like water.