Before and After My Transition

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I wrote this poem before I transitioned, back when I was just gay.

I don’t even love you,

I just like you a lot.

As a friend,

Or maybe more…

Like when our eyes meet,

I have to look at the floor,

‘cu it won’t mean the same

For me as it will you:

I’m a secular queer;

You’re an orthodox Jew.

They say it’s biology

That makes it this way,

That you can’t like me back,

‘Cuz you’re not actually gay.

And I think I believe it,

But what if it’s more?

What if you also have to look the floor?

So our eyes won’t lock for too long,

So the DJ will put on another song,

And it won’t be about love,

Or loneliness, or sex,

And we’ll go back to dancing,

And you’ll send me a text,

To say that you loved going out on the town,

That I’m your bro for life,

That you won’t let me down,

That you were just wondering if you could

Lay in my bed,

And cuddle for a bit —

“Bro, are you down?”

I’ll probably say yes,

Like I did before,

And soon my eyes will be back on the floor,

Where I spy your shirt, your socks, and your belt,

And there in your arms I won’t even melt,

‘Cuz I really don’t love you,

I just like you so much

That I took up smoking cigarettes,

Because every stupid fag

Means a little more time with you,

And a little bit less of this life of the lack.

The day after we kissed, you wore your snapback.

We’re not even talking,

But you’re saying so much,

And I’m not even sure if you remember my touch.

And I really don’t love you –

I mean it this time.

I meant it all along,

It wasn’t just to keep rhyme.

You’re not really my type.

You’re not someone I’d go for.

You’re really just my friend,

With the smallest, strangest “more.”

Now I’ve told you how I feel,

And I can say no more.

My last cigarette butt is glowing on the floor,

And I’ll mostly be sad to part from a friend,

But also to receive a fist bump,

Not a kiss,

At the end.

Basic Ass Daddy

I wrote this poem after transitioning.

Basic-ass daddy missing out on sweet pussy because he can’t wrap his mind around the notion that I don’t just want to play “girl” in bed, I’m trying to be the bitch that rides his face. “What other options?” he asks when I say I’m non-binary, as if it were not a fact of my being but a selection he lingers on briefly before turning the dial back to “young men,” the only genus he thinks he desires. “If you’re only attracted to men, look elsewhere,” I tell him, batting mascara’d lashes at my screen. I am no man. “But if you’re attracted to me, let’s talk.” Our chat stalls for the first time since I sent him that picture of my ass. Then he lobs more intellectual mortar against my being before settling in his allegiance to the gender binary: “I’m attracted to boys, not uncategorizable aliens,” he says. I sigh, twirling a finger thru the curls of my high pony, gazing out the window of my tower in suburbia. Daddy claimed to be the “feminist dom top” that my profile says I’m “looking for.” My prince is coming, any day now, I’m sure…