Your Life

It isn't that you don't like boys
 It's that you only like boys you want to be
 David, with his jaw carved out of the side of a cliff
 Malcolm, who doesn't have secrets
 Just stories he owes no one
 Chris, the basketball hero with the tick
 Blinks 15 times when he makes a shot
 You spend hours blinking in the mirror
 Pretending you're a star like him
 Mary Laveen, calls you a dyke and
 You don't have the language to tell her she's wrong and right
 So you just show up to her house
 Promising to paint your fingernails red
 With what will gush from her busted face if she ever says it again
 You're in the 7th grade
 You don't even know you want a girlfriend
 You still believe too much in the people who believe in Jesus
 To even feel that desire through it's hell threat
 You just want to kick your desk
 On the way to the principal's office
 Slouch in detention
 Want to cut your hair and spit out
 Whatever you don't want in your mouth
 Your own name even
 Skirting around the truth
 You don't yet know
 The boys are building their confidence on stolen land
 But you do worry the girls
 Might be occupied with things you will never understand
 Won't ever ever be good at
 You take one pretty step
 And feel like you're pouring bubbles into your own bloodbath
 You don't want a soft death
 You want a hard life
 That is your life
 Your life in the locker room
 That doesn't stop demanding you keep your eyes on the floor
 Your life at the prom
 While you run home in a snowstorm
 Chucking your last pair of heels in a snowbank
 Realizing you are the only boy
 You ever wanted to tear your dress off for
 Your life the first Christmas you spend alone
 The years you learn to build your family out of scratch
 Your life when someone drags you from a restroom by the collar of your coat
 Your life everytime airport security screams
 "Pink or blue, pink or blue"
 Tryna figure out what machine setting to run you through
 Choosing your life and how that made you into someone
 Who now often finds it easy
 To explain your gender by saying
 You are happiest on the road
 When you're not here or there but in between
 That yellow line running down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam
 Your name is not a song you will sing under your breath
 Your pronouns haven't even been invented yet
 You're gonna shave your head and drive through Texas
 You're gonna kill your own God
 So you can fall in love for the first time
 They're gonna keep telling you
 Your heartbeat is a pre-existing condition
 They're gonna keep telling you
 You are a crime of nature
 And you're gonna look at all your options
 And choose conviction
 Choose to carve your own heart out of the side of a cliff
 Choose to spend your whole life
 Telling secrets you owe no one, to everyone
 'Til there isn't anyone
 Who can insult you by calling you what you are
 You holy blinking star
 You highway streak of light
 Falling over and over
 For your hard life, your perfect life
 Your sweet and beautiful life