frame

I'm not trying to
make things difficult
for you. I know you want
me to be a left-brained,
heterosexual female--
not because you don't
love me, but because maybe
it's an easier person to know,
accept, maybe even love.
And I'm not blaming you for that.

When I was a child, I stood on the
fulcrum of a teeter-totter, wondering
if my life would ever tip. My brain was
ambidextrous, asking itself, "Where do
your loyalties lay?"

I liked playing chess, but I spent
hours drawing squares on top of squares,
abstract, imagining towers, houses, a village,
the people inside, the things they were thinking
and then writing about them. Sometimes they
were dot-jots, and sometimes they were
multiple pages. It depended on the family
and how forcefully they gripped my heart
or held the cold pistol to my back.

Logic was like a piece of chalk
in my hand, and someone was saying:
"Go on. Write the story instead of living it."
I thought it was a good idea, but after a while,
it began to sound horrible. Sense makes no sense,
and you aren't a believer if you're telling me you
don't want to believe. That sounds redundant,
but if you climb inside of my head you'll
see what I mean, and want to purge
yourself clean.

I, the baby of the family,
the little sister to two brothers,
the neighborhood tomboy, the
"baby girl" to my father, the
"bub" to my mum.

I’ve learned the framework of our family like a religion;
I stopped believing in it a few years ago.

This, me: finding
my spot on the teeter-totter,
fulcrum repositioned, love in the
right stance this time. "I understand
it isn't easy, when my gender and sex
don't align, but you've got to trust me on
me, 'cause you've got nothing left to go by."

I pretended
not to see him cry,
but I did. And when I
looked closer, I realized
it was not he who was crying,
but rather myself.

"The world doesn't stop
turning, but you get over
the initial motion sickness."