i wear women’s deodorant
and men’s cologne
i mix pink and blue
to match my birthstone
amethyst, creating a synthesis
a dialectic speaking my singleness
womanly chivalry
and masculine grace
a twist of the wrist
that turns on its face
bending borders into a threshold
equal parts silver and gold
i lead and i follow
a solo in parts
it’s hard pill to swallow
if you’re scared of the arts
i’ve never been more one than my two
perhaps this will give you a breakthrough—
the illusion that arose
of oil and of water
proves that opposition serves those
opposed to the other
as for me, i’ll keep my duality
it beats a boxed-in, binary, banality
– bigender means
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what i got by silas denver melvin (written at the unrelatable writing retreat, sep 17 2022)
[Text ID: got bad. got worse. got suspended for blessing the face of a transphobe with the open palmed reckoning of my small hands. got praised. got punished. got home & ma, her crown bowed to the steering wheel, her tired, dish-water knuckles smoothing imagined creases from her Stevie Nicks skirt, told me she understood, but couldn't condone. got taken out of class. got put in therapy. got threatened, thanked, spit at, spit on. got everything but even. got medicated. got put in a small room with a suit-pressed man & a single particle wood table. got asked if i thought id ever see heaven. got a good look & measured my answer. got considered like livestock. got 5 days out of school like isolation was a fever-trick to sweat out the sick they assigned to my blood. got up on the last day, before the yolk-heavy sun even broke the fragile line of the horizon, before the cat birds could perch on the white birch branches & begin their endless crying, & thought to myself let heaven start where my boots are laced & allow no merciless crowd decide me otherwise, which is to say… i got out & from there, i have yet to stop. /End ID]