Blush

I always tried to resist pink, but how could I?

In that world there are dream houses,

there are dolls with shiny breasts of plastic

and feet the size of breath mints.

Feet the size of a raised pinkie nail.

The back of a hand striking my mother's face.

It was so easy to be a girl.

Makeup college, bottle blonde,

wandering lesbian dates,

fishnets walking between bumpers of pickup trucks

by the light of the plastic surgeon’s office.

I sank deep into pink

but I would be no woman.

And so the fantasies came, as they always do.

Always sooner than is convenient,

always later than is needed.

Dripping into deep folds,

cerebellum,

maybelline,

cover girl.

She and hers hid me too well.

I didn't transition.

For 7 years I didn't transition.

Terrified of losing the air in a skirt

for cargo shorts heavy with reeking pennies.

Terrified that any goodness, any softness

cultivated in those meek years

would be dragged under in the tide of the first injection.

I stabbed it into my thigh anyway.

I walk in the water.

My skirt floats round my calves.

The catcalls are similar to those before,

but at this new depth in my voice, the claws come.

The sharpest knife is brought from the drawer.

It was created to cut through my sisters,

to tear through their layers of spandex,

to turn the steel bones of their corsets inward,

piercing spleen, lung, heart.

But I will continue painting my room shades of pink.

You can see it from the street,

there, glowing onto the sidewalk,

into the eyes of men and dogs

as impotent and unseemly as I.