I can’t help but feel the resonances
with last spring, last
time I rolled
the syllables trans/
femme around in my mouth so
convincingly. I can’t quite find
comfort in this cyclical con/
fusion, questioning:
periodic, seasonal. It’s more
like doubt, like sadness in January
or the sunflowers too
soon. In the circle
I almost want to lay
out new pronouns like dripping
laundry to dry and fold and she/
hers almost wrings
out my tongue.

And then chivalry by cop, “help crossing,
ladies?” and a compliment
from a man in the bus
station, when asked if we're
together— “I wish, just
look at her.”
Those men! Thought I/
was a woman! Sour in
less than a second.

Let me be this body

walking in the street
lights, I tell my friend my
cycles and she finds assurance in
them: affinity with tides and harvests, an
attunement to our implicated nature in/
nature, not
doubt nor insincerity.

Reassure me change is not a lack
of commitment, to the project or this/
that gender, say, so when
morning is a femin/
inity and by tea
time I stretch and lounge, skin
fitting looser— might be masc/
uline, you tell
me how
do I noun that? Either/
or and both;

I repeat and return to the convincing
act of others, hoping for
answers in what turns to their confusion,
too. What to do with this? Wringing
of hands I imagine for them. Clinging
to their "miss?" and seconds later, apologize
for their apologies, "my
mistake."

What makes my bod/
y legible? I write this and write.
A writer whose nouns don't fit.
Things dissolving
like edges. Paper in water,
pulp. Dunk the poem
in a cup and hope for a vulva.