adolescence hit me like a bass note, reverberating from my abdomen to my eyes.

i was seeing in different colors, lightning-coursed with the turn of a dial.

i couldn’t change fast enough; i stopped eating, clung to my pillow at night, 

124 bpm tears, neon bleeding through my sheets, gasping into dawn.

androgen immersed, my friends were changing forms

suddenly they became enigmas, their every breath held hidden depths,

signs and wonders glimmered in their eyes and whirled in their veins, 

they became glimmering circuits, traced electric blue by desire and restraint. 

then it was october, vega sparked low on the horizon. contrails traced the sky overhead, 

still shimmering efflorescent in the pale light of dusk. there might have been ten of us or twenty

but it didn’t matter because when he came up to me it was as though we were alone. 

that night i couldn’t sleep. i was defenseless before myself, undeniable, ashamed. 

when you’re thirteen there’s nothing quite as awful as being different. 

things long ignored quickly become apparent; feelings long ignored make themselves felt. 

shadows lurk outside the windows, wind whistles through the sycamore leaves;

the world is indecipherable, distant music echoes from the twilit stars.