A Deshmane
a genderqueer’s reflection on the fine print of seeing (nods at mirror) over my toothbrush every morning
with care, i unravel the
implications of my hips. androgyny
bedazzles the eye of the beholder me
via sheer impossible infinitude.
queer kids recall becoming
good things come in twos: we’re pointing at old polaroids on the corkboard in my bathroom. there’s me in a feather boa, her shirtless in a dry patch on the back lawn. we wear matching shades with rhinestones and this is before i have begun to wear pink the way i think boys wear pink— carelessly. this is before she tells her father she doesn’t want to cut her hair, citing samson as a weak alibi for the raw reality of her not being his son. this is before i write a six page letter to every hindu god i can remember, wishing away the breasts i see setting in alarmingly fast. my shoulder is wet from her living these moments a second unbearable time. silent despite everything, we resume our remembering.
[untitled i.]
you remain sipping sweet elixirs, saccharine shots of willing decay. girlhood, you whisper, leaves
molars tingling, stained. you grimace, swallow, smile. necrotic in self-absorbed restraint, you
raise a glass to your preservation rot, to concealment left half-consumed upon a sheen of
sorrow ever present. long before the distant heat of your body flares, uncertain, near mine,
dissatisfaction is the man you ache to be fucked by every weeknight. to self-ruin by choice, you
toast, and to authenticity overshadowed by expectation eternal. utinam non possis pati sic
vivere. licking droplets from a lakebed dry with reluctance, i drink you in: our concurrence
convergence concavity deepens. hollow with nothings withheld, you emerge unable to bear the
thirst. to be wholly absorbed by your curved smoothness, the provisional presence of your
solidity, is to draw from a well locked away from my eyelids. my hips lock with yours, mirroring
my inhibition insecurity ineptitude. enclosure within a form so easily adopted by you becomes
ever more herculean. to bear witness to your (not so) easily donning [girl hips girl chest girl
fingers face wrists] is poison: squeeze drops of our lacking into my dry, ready mouth. after
everything, after clarity is contorted and redefined by our aversion-tainted hands, you know how it ends. how we end, with a slipping away into nebulous neithers and boths. with a rejection of
girlhood and an inability to fathom an existence otherwise. we leave ourselves behind. we ache
to be visible. we long, we live, we last in these bodies, and maybe we learn to be whole.
A. Deshmane (they/them) is a queer poet living in scorching Arizona. When they’re not writing, they can be found wandering the desert on local hikes, reading dead Roman authors, or ingesting copious amounts of iced coffee. Their other work has been published by Stone of Madness Press. Find them @aar.deshm on Instagram.