Betwixt and Between

I am not alive, but my heart is beating.

My place is in my mother’s womb, curled up next to my brother.

I am there with him, safe, our limbs tangled like vines

my gender unknown,

our magic exchanging.

I am zero, born with the right body parts.

My place is as my mother’s daughter, her “little girl.”

I am there with her,

where else could I be?

I am three, small, and fidgety.

My place is in an uncomfortable outfit that corresponds with my twin’s,

the lace and velvet itchy and hot.

I am there,

told to smile,

though I protest with my screaming.

I am seven, nervous, my stomach upset.

My place is in my first-grade classroom, a good girl in check.

I am there,

told to sit still,

and stop crying.

I am fifteen and my hormones are running amuck.

My place is getting mother’s approval of my latest boy crush.

I am there, I think…

…but now I'm also not sure.

Because at the same time I am up in my room,

And I am dreaming of girls.

I am sixteen. I want to have sex.

My place is safe in the hotel room next to my mother's, sober, at rest.

But I am not there,

in my place,

not this time.

I am on a beach with someone I’ve met just a week prior,

protected, awkwardly fumbling, laughing, and sober at least,

gasping in the sand amidst old beer cans and stars.

(Months later my mother will read about this time on the beach in my journal

And call me a whore and a slut, her claimed instincts maternal.)

I am eighteen, my hips in full bloom.

My place is as a young woman, pretty, told to be smart,

but in search of a groom.

I am there…

…but not all of the way,

not quite.

Discomfort rumbling deep keeps me wondering at night.

I am twenty-one, in love with him, maybe.

My place is with my boyfriend who wants only to save me.

But I am not there,

really,

though I want to wish that I were.

I am falling in love with someone else

who unlike my boyfriend doesn’t blink when I tell him I also like girls.

I am twenty-four, married to that same someone else and in graduate school.

My place is planning for babies over which my mother can coo.

But I am not there.

I am learning and faltering and breaking the spell that was cast on the day I was born with the right parts as my mother’s very own daughter.

And that same someone else is still there with me, too.

I am twenty-five, dying inside and out.

My place is in a graduate school seminar building my clout.

But I am not there,

though not by choice, I regret.

I am on an operating table, my gut a gaping maw of perfection

killing me quickly for all my neglect.

I am thirty, earning the highest degree.

My place is visiting my mother with her grandchildren, a new mother myself, soon to be Ph.D.

But I am not there.

I've decided there might be other ways to earn the love I should have been born with:

Instead I am childless, and much to my mother’s veiled chagrin, running twenty-five miles into fifty of a race I don’t know I will finish, just to find out with this win if she'll see something different.

I am thirty-four, a professor.

My place is as the talented yet humble child-bearing bread winner.

I am not there, though, not ever again.

I am instead revealing the non-binary being that's always been there within,

Still without children, no longer a daughter.

I am thirty-five, disconnected, born all over again.

My place is not

bearing children so my mother

can fill a shelf in her heart I cannot make full,

or churning out success after success so that maybe one day she’ll love me just as I am:

childless,

her child.



My place is right here.

Right here is my place.

It is right where I am, where I am loved as I'm seen.

Not a son or a daughter, but betwixt and between.