The Only Eyes In Any Given Room

I remember stumbling
Upon the picture
For the first time
(I had to look a second):

The child in it was so young,
Its golden hair so pristine
Despite its length (minimal)
That its gender was ambiguous.

It was its eyes--
Whose color I would place
Akin to an emerald
If I reduced color
To the objects
In which it manifests itself--

Which called attention
To its skin--obviously not
Wholly white--and made
Its hair's blondeness
Its defining feature.

That was very recently.

Of course I do know,
And did know long ago
The gender of that infant,
Although it is, at best, idealistic
That I imagine the giant
It became having once
Been innocent or pure;

White was never a color
I associated with him;
The first time I saw him,
He was wearing yellow.

But those green eyes were
Most of what set him apart,
His now shaved blond hair
Under the shade
Of a baseball cap,
A coarse-textured haze
That might have been
A mess if there was
Enough of it to house disarray.

His only other definiting feature,
Was the white part of him,
Whose dissapearance is ironic,
Having homogenized with
His not white part,
Because he thought that
He would hit the tanning bed,
Like all of his
Other green-eyed friends.

Like all of his
Other green-eyed friends,
He effortlessly
Rendered me a fool
For trying to look past
The façades and masks we
Fashion in an attempt
To ward off desire
From most onlookers
As we peer through
It eyeholes at our
Next target, hiding

The fact that he's just another
Too tall black guy that wears
White guy clothing, "a sight
We see now more than ever"
Some would say. That's unfortunate--
His eyes are still the only eyes
In any given room
That could make mine
Look twice.