My Gender Explained

A poem by Quilliam and Ve

The deep husk of a voice singing sombrely, muffled and scuffed, on an old record

The smell of cigar smoke and campfire on a biting night

The somber chill the first day that autumn starts to smell of earthy decay trickling down the neck of my grade school collar

A comfortable girl making daisy chains unaware of the constraints looped lightly around her fat thighs

The looming grey distress of “woman”

Wishing to be lusted after though never lusting back

A curly fair child bouncing it’s legs on the warm, wet stones

A burbling laugh in an empty wood

The lifeless depths of a sunken cave where a man could not return from before he long ran out of air

A dark forest you dream of that feels familiar, yet strange, and the sucking quiet of the green trees

A fresh carcass, beautifully splayed, fur glowing over lean, rolling muscles on the side of looping mountain road

A woman the way a man might sometimes dream himself to be

The shiver of dark pleasure as a blade curls up your throat

A beautiful stranger who glows bronze and amber in the late sun, who-in that moment-makes you forget every man you ever loved

An older boy in a record store in a mini skirt and black eyeliner-who shows you around the shop and buys you a candy and treats you like an equal in that glossy moment

It’s collages cut from fat art magazine, in a dusty art room

A glass box with no doors in the midst of a lush paradise of delights

A siren gently wrapping you close too her feathered breast, the warm caress of her sweet breath against your ear-as she stretches her jaws wide

The worlds most beautiful painting displayed under a black sheet in a small, cheap gallery space

The fawning adoration of older queer couples passing two young queer terms holding hands

Shitty art on expensive canvases

Not giving a fuck.

The taste of honeysuckle

Smut role play as an autistic, asexual teen

The thrilling burn of Pineapple Express, and the asexual, comfort of affectionate queer “men” in the prices of finding themselves

A little white mushroom

A test I failed on purpose in my church summer camp because god was really being a dick this time.

Mother fucking deep magic.

Something that just is

And was

And will be.