They/Them

said short: i feel more like a stud. said

with some nuance: as if i came to

masculinity through the women’s gate,

as if a daughter who grew into her father

but not like trans, but like trans or

a transformation without catalyst

or smoke. or more like born

in the right body too early or born

at the wrong time, in the wrong language.

i remember Tommy said he (is he a they now?)

lived for how i put it in that one poem “more

tomboy than boy” and i think that’s what

language does—builds a room made for living.

and who have i followed further into myself?

Cam, Paula, Tommy, Fati, Andrea, Auntie George

or anyone who saved me from a body of silence

by just living their lives in the sun? and if

the soul is a table on which the body sits

crowded with the meat and the marrow

and the red, red wine, around me sit

too many ghosts to ever rest in isolation.

of course you should address me in the plural.

said short: i am everyone. i am everything.

said shorter: i am.