“A gentleman is merely a patient wolf.”
There are men who scream that Allah hates estrogen
and women who sing along.
I’ve opened my eyes and can finally see that
the baby pink sky I yearned for is not scientifically impossible.
I was simply born and raised beside her under lemon chiffon clouds
and never knew a sunny day until I was fourteen years old.
I’ve always been a little girl,
but never did I expect to fold so perfectly in an unsuspecting grasp.
There are men who were never taught about the stardust that makes up their wife’s skin
and women who must bathe in sulfuric acid.
When I met her, she spoke softly,
unlike myself.
His eyes were opto-mechanical. His irises were spools of film.
Her voice was riddled with uncertainty and jellybeans.
I wrote that she was marmalade, and sailboats, and sidewalk chalk.
I wrote that he was a genius.
Though more often than not, my poetry is nothing more than a fallacy,
for I struggle to comprehend brains and bodies that do not resemble my own.
There are boys who fear girls with hair follicles and lipocytes
and girls who fear boys with two hands and ten fingers.