My gender is the moon and its gravity,
pulling tides on Earth's oceans. Some deep-sea creature
yet to rise to the surface, yet to be named in the shallow
waters. I am not the gazelle to be lined in a stranger's sight,
those laser-precision eyes examining the skin and weight
of me in all the wrong places, searching for weakness,
searching for the apology I owe my mother because I drowned
her daughter in me. Airport security calls me sir
as he passes my buzzed head and it sits on my neck
a jacket with shoulder padding too wide for my wingspan.
Maybe I only want to be identified ever in passing, no more
than a cursory glance, no words from my Adam-less apple,
no binary imprinted onto my pupils. From behind, I don't have to see
an accusatory glare. My gender is at the right place at the wrong time,
caution tape barring where "good organs" go to die.
I don't bear anger as a child, just confusion as a sibling.
So when the barista calls me m'am I wonder if she's referring
to the person behind me. All this time to worry about inconsequential
things like nomenclature and I think the Earth is on fire, who knows
if we will survive the next fifty years and yet—
I wonder at the small pleasure self-determination provides.
Humanness metamorphoses as urgency in times of nuclear war,
carbon dioxide choking the horizon, or stray asteroids flung into our orbit.
Everything I desire becomes its most earnest self as the world makes
its penultimate turn into the end. I dream about becoming
the hard edge of a knife, my body's peaks whetted into sleek hills,
torpedoing through liquid and air faster, faster like dolphins and hawks
must move unencumbered by vestigial limbs. Evolution isn't a regret
we can reverse and no pituitary gland can walk me back to childhood.
We only get one high school prom and that's it. No one is ever 17 again,
waiting for the chaperones to look away before sneaking a kiss.
So if you're gay, call me anything he/she/they/bitch/faggot/queer/butch/stud/femme
soft. My gender is a feast, a gluttony, an eye-sore that is the lonely object permanence
of Hypothetical Planet X. I don't need you to look me in the face and make false
promises that this (unlike the times before) will be the very last time you forget
to refer to me by the correct pronouns. Because you will inevitably falter
and that's alright (I'll forgive you). I'll remind you what the stakes are:
Kids today are being fashioned as litmus tests against catastrophe.
I want you to say the words that will hunt shame to the edge of extinction.
Call us yours, a type of love that casts out doubt and will not let the light fade in us.
