my otherness sticks with me no matter where I go : never loan out your rainy day : how many bodies are we : how many selves : how many worlds : where does this sorrow come from : where did we learn it ::

years ago when asked if my lover thought like a man I could not reply : the question made no sense : the answer lies on the ocean floor : the world, a ripple effect like old glass : the wind, I chase it like I chase conclusions : :

I am in danger of becoming a cautionary tale : the number of walls surrounding me is variable : I have failed to become a plaster saint : I have failed to become a woman : my hard-won silence comes from beyond the body :  life is soup, not sandwich : skin becomes the pain of old injuries : tread the world into blend & blur : when I die I will become a map : it’s easy enough to change this body : hard to choose what to become next in the bardo of recycling : I love : that is the single unshakable core of me : I decide where I begin & end : our ears are full of mice : we put our faith in collection baskets : paste our legends to refrigerator doors : our genitals shift in their skin : on the corner of want & loss I drop my books in a repeated loop of slapstick : I cradle my balls as though the tremors could shake them loose : my skin damp with panic : my penis strains against my palm : there is no name for this love nor the body it becomes : forget everything you ever learned about ownership : that orange mesh that contains nothing but doubt ::

how to edit life : I do it all the time : chelate myself into another man : I take my sex in hand, the weight of it, like the weight of my heart locked down by perception : in the blank earth sleeping diamond resist names : & the question you were born with escapes :  I am without hand, puffballs, or handbooks, without a comforting aura of predictability : without imitators : so don’t call me, I prefer not to fill up with sand : or moss : sand blows through the house, snake-backs across the boards : :

sometimes I want to drive down a deserted road to find the hidden ruins at the end & move in : like bees : or stars, following in the rearview : pushing the motor in the heart to click & hum in hope : my name is the door to the shed left open : my name is fire just like yours : sorry doesn’t do hostile takeovers : the forest will eventually find you : forty species of mold will eventually find you as well : life is about change : its walls are groaning with air & need : a hiccup could bring it all down : 365 day, all in the service of change : life in a derelict structure requires the structure to adapt : to resist : people love their migrations : they feel their immobility validated by the movement of other creatures : what is different in me when seen : when watched, clocked, monitored, yet not seen ::

old cowboy stories about footprints and horseshoes don’t make sense anymore : there’s a railway bridge along this spit I can’t cross : where you can hear broken pages, rats from the past, horses on the stairs & everything’s so loud ::

& what has life given me : a path and a lichen-wrapped stone : questions to answer : the trail of a process invisible to outsiders : I prefer sodomy to piety : build me a body inarguable : a slick torso like a book : I am the man weeping with the pain of everyday erasure & negation : the casual cruelty of she : the man demanding to be : waiting for a bless you ::