For years I’ve been told to hold
myself up, to stand as tall as I am,
but the world I’ve come to know
rarely seems fitting. I have to take
a knee when I piss, duck when I step
in the shower. I swear
I’ve tried to adjust, but my limbs
cross their signals the farther they are
from my brain. My legs jerk
catastrophically. Even my love
is a violence above you all.
In order to see eye-to-eye, I must fold
on command—look at that
hunch in my shoulders from all the talks
we’ve shared. When they say I must
play basketball, they mean they like
to race horses. But there’s distance
even in humor: when 4’10” Alison Dow
stood near teenage me and bet
she couldn’t lick my nipples from there,
we never spoke again.
I never speak of the weather up here
because you don’t have the language for it,
and my own alphabet
is beginning to wear me down.
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