web of pupils

once, when i was young,

the eyes of a friend shocked open

when i explained,

i’m like a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

yesterday, my fingers held my hair in a bun

so my mirror showed me my mother, 

for only a moment,

until i let it back down above my bare shoulders.

tonight, i’m brushing my teeth

on the bathroom floor 

because i don’t like

what my eyes can see.

tomorrow, i’ll watch the denim skirt

that made my grandmother’s eyes jump

drop from my hips to my feet

and fold back into a wooden drawer.

i’m cleaning up the stubble 

off my whisker-rough cheeks again. 

but, i’ll leave the hair above my lip for now.

because i can.

sometimes,

comfort is not a choice made by me.

sometimes, the whites of eyes can assume of me

over what i know of myself and

sometimes eyes are hands,

stripping and scraping and skinning,

seething to see a body for what it is not.

maybe the girl who is not a girl 

trapped inside the boy who is not a boy 

will exist in a web of pupils 

like prey to a spider of too many eyes. 

because most of the time, 

a skirt and a mustache and earrings 

and long hair and tight shirts and 

all that is attempted legibility 

mean nothing of me, and 

instead i know of myself 

as i feel and laugh and cry and kiss, 

hug and walk and love and think, 

because sometimes, 

all you can see is all you can see, 

and all i am is all i am, 

and that is true 

and that is okay.